I have enjoyed reading the mods and getting ideas for bringing my offset back to life. It had some very annoying issues that made smoking a pain, with not such great results when it came to ribs. Some of these will hopefully resolve the issues, along with the fantastic recipes and cooking methods you all have posted (thank you for those). The mods I have decided on are as follows:
1. Use a charcoal basket and the Minion method - benefit will be longer burns, lower temp that is more controlled.
2. Raise the basket up higher than the supplied grate - will prevent smothering the flame from ash
3. Seal the firebox and grill chamber doors using fireplace cord - will reduce the loss of heat and smoke
4. Install an aluminum conduit to bring the chimney vent down to the level of the cooking grate
I am not one to over engineer anything, preferring to keep things as simple as possible. So, to my questions:
1. Other than to help increase the heat retention in the cooking chamber, do I need the bricks? They will reduce the overall volume inside the smoker, limiting the capacity for smoke carrying "air", and causing it to flow quicker to the exit tube (fluids flow faster in tubes with a smaller cross section). This seems like a waste since we want the smoke to slowly and languidly "flow" over the meat.
2. Once we add the down pipe to the chimney, bringing the exit to the level of the cooking grate, we will have created a "pocket" within which the meat will sit. Since heat rises, the smoke will rise to fill this pocket before venting out of the chimney. Do we therefore need the baffles/vented sheets under the meat? It seems that this will direct a lot of the smoke and heated air a little too quickly toward the chimney, wasting the precious smoke. I can see the necessity if the chimney is at the firebox end, but not if it is on the opposite end.
3. Now that we have that pocket of smoke above the grill, is there any value in reducing the gap from the firebox to the cooking chamber and forcing the hot smoke downward? Currently, the gap is large enough so that the grill level splits it in half. Surely we want to get the heat and smoke up into the pocket as quickly and directly as possible to create a more uniform temperature range across that smoke pocket?
Thanks for any feedback!! I have more ideas, but thought 3 was a good start for a newcomer.