Bringing temp down on WSM

[adamr]

Smoking a couple racks of ribs on my WSM. Had temp sitting steady at 250 for the first couple hours. I came out to wrap my ribs and temp had jumped up to 350. Looked inside and one of my wood chunks had ignited instead of smoldering. I pulled it out with tongs. What ways do you guys find helps with bringing temps down? Thanks in advance.

 

[buckaholic84]

closing the bottom vents is about the only way if you have thin blue smoke or no smoke you could close top a little bit too, that's about the only way.....if it was just a log that caught on fire you could try opening lid and getting excess heat out....sometimes that rush of air will fuelbfire tho but if your temps are that high might be worth a shot

 

[adamr]

I closed all the vents except for one of the bottom ones, which I left about 1/3 open. Brought it down some. Took the lid off to release extra heat and was able to get it back down to 250 fairly quickly. Thanks buckaholic.

 

[dward51]

How big a chunk was it? That's a pretty big jump. I usually put my smoke wood chunks both on top and nestled down in the charcoal. The stuff on top fires up with the initial dump of lit from the chimney and the other stuff never seemed to flame up like what you describe. Did you add it on top of the lit at some later time?

 

[adamr]

How big a chunk was it? That's a pretty big jump. I usually put my smoke wood chunks both on top and nestled down in the charcoal. The stuff on top fires up with the initial dump of lit from the chimney and the other stuff never seemed to flame up like what you describe. Did you add it on top of the lit at some later time?

The chunk was on the outside edge of the charcoal ring but it was right in front of one of the vents. Haven't had one flare up like that before. Odd.