- Jun 23, 2010
- 2
- 10
Hello I am a new member, as well as a new smoker. I completed my first smoke this weekend, and have been on here reading up on some tips. I used a recently purchased brinkman vertical smoker (I made a few alterations including adding a new thermostat, added a grate to the charcoal pan, and drilled some holes in the charcoal pan). For my inaugural smoke, I decided to go with country style ribs, as I wanted something with a little bit of a shorter cook time. I marinated them in Werstershire sauce for about 6 hours, drained them and then put a butt rub on them, and placed in the fridge overnight. The next day around 11:30 I fired up the smoker using charcoal lump as my fuel. Once the charcoal looked ready I added some pieces of mesquite chunk, added the water pan with boiling water and closed the lid. The temp immediately went above 300 and was staying there. After about 15min I started removing some of the charcoal, and eventually the temp fell, but it fell too low down to about 200. At about 12:15 the temp rose up to 210 -215, and put the ribs on at that temp. They cooked the 1[sup]st[/sup] hour at this temp, but after that I was able to keep it around 220, and for the last 2 hours I had it at 250. I did use the 2-2-1 method, wrapping them if foil with apple juice for 2 hours in the middle. I also sprayed them with apple juice a few times during the cooking process. I added barbeque sauce at about 5:00 and pulled the ribs off at 5:15, their internal temp was at 180. Some of the ribs were really tender, but some of them were a little less than tender (not tough but just not the tenderness I was looking for). They had a great taste, nice smoke flavor with a nice smoke ring, but I am assuming if I had done this correctly they all would be nice and tender. Please give me your critiques, and any tips you can give me so I improve for the next time