My mother in law asked me to try and smoke a prime rib for Christmas Eve. It was the first time for me cooking one and the pressure was on because it was for a big Christmas Eve dinner. After researching on the forum I decided to follow Bearcaver's method. To go along with the prime rib I also made some of Chef JimmyJ's smokey au jus for the first time. The night before I rinsed, dried, rubbed the prime rib with some thick worcesterchire sauce, sprinkled on some sea salt, corse black pepper, onion powder, garlic powder, wrapped it and placed it in the fridge for the night. I fired up the smoker around noon on Christmas Eve. It was 4 degrees out and the cooking chamber lid on my smoker was frozen shut. I took the weed burner I use to start the charcoal and ran it into the firebox to thaw my lid and help preheat the smoker. I started with an internal smoker temp of 30 degrees. After getting the smoker started I got everything ready for my au jus. Everything made it on at 1 pm. I pulled the au jus out around 5 pm and finished preparing it. At 5:30 pm I pulled the prime rib at 130 degrees. I wrapped it up and headed to the party. It was a 30 min. drive and allowed the prime rib to rest. I had planned for 5 hours and luckley it worked out. I got to the party and watched the prime rib disappear as fast as I was slicing it. Complete success and thanks to Bearcarver and Chef JimmyJ for sharing their knowledge.