After 4hrs 20 mins, I had to pull them off. I think they were actually a little too far, as they would have pulled apart if I lifted just one end (and these are only 3/4 slabs of baby backs), but thats just fine with me.
The finished product after some rest.
Lunch is served.
Thoughts:
The Meat:
The smoke was not over powering at all. There was zero creosote tingle, and a nice smoke flavor. (I burned it hotter than I would normally smoke; 300-325 on the hot side, and I laid these on the stack side that held 250-275)
There is no a distinctive smoke ring until you get all the way to the bone. The smoke really penetrated these ribs nicely. (I used slightly under seasoned oak, and regularly put my hand in the stack flow to check the exhaust and it was steamy) - oh and the membrane was pulled before rub)
Managing the Fire:
The fire was not impossible to manage, but it required constant tending. I started the fire at about 7:30 this morning, and didn't put the meat on until 9. This gave me enough time to heat the pit, and build a bed of coals.
- One thing I would do different with the fire is to get larger logs on earlier to build up a bigger hotter bed of coals.
Early on it was dicy maintaing temp because small wood burns very fast, so its constantly open/close the firebox. Towards the last 2 hours I had a nice hot bed of coals, so I was able to let it go for about 30 minutes at a clip before I needed to tend to the fire.
I burned more wood than I would have thought. I went through about 3 milk crates of wood that was split down to 1-2" diameter splits about 8" long for a 4.5 hour smoke (6 hour burn total)
I was able to get some thicker pieces going, but they produced a lot of dirty smoke until they were well burned (open the firebox slightly when this happened), so I stayed away from them to keep it clean.
This is the view of the firebox during the last 2 hours. Notice a nice bed of embers on the bottom, and well burning wood on the grate. It was not a trivial task to maintain this, so don't set off to burn all wood unless you have nothing else to do. One thing that I've learned with the fireplace, if the wood disappears and you end up with almost no ash or embers it means your fire is hot, and burning as good as it can. After all that wood that went it The firebox has enough ash to fill a beer can with with room leftover.
