I fired up my new smoke vault 18 this morning to season it. It was a free gift to me so I am gonna give it a go. 9nly mod I made was to flatten the stops on the dampeners on both sides and top. Everything else was not touched. I hooked it all up, set it where there was little to no wind, filled the water tray, added 4 small to medium hickory chunks from Walmart (western brand), closed both side vents all the way and opened the top all the way. I have a two probe digital thermometer set up reading ambient temp in the middle and top racks to see the profile.
It fired up nice and I set it up to the lowest setting. It got to 200 pretty quick. No matter where the temp went there was about a 20 degree difference between the middle and top of the cooker. I raised and lowered the temp to get a feel for sensitivity and all went well.
Only issue was the amount of smoke I got. As I said I used 4 medium sized hickory chunks spread around the plate. The plate was sitting in the lowest rack per instructions. After an hour no smoke. I thought the wood might be wet but the entire box was bone dry. Only after setting the plate on top of the drip tray....pretty much right on top of the fire and setting the temp to 225 did I get good smoke.
Did I do something wrong?.....should I start the chunks with a torch before putting the chip tray on the first rack? Would chips be better? Seem like putting it on the drip pan that low is not right.
Thanks for any help.
It fired up nice and I set it up to the lowest setting. It got to 200 pretty quick. No matter where the temp went there was about a 20 degree difference between the middle and top of the cooker. I raised and lowered the temp to get a feel for sensitivity and all went well.
Only issue was the amount of smoke I got. As I said I used 4 medium sized hickory chunks spread around the plate. The plate was sitting in the lowest rack per instructions. After an hour no smoke. I thought the wood might be wet but the entire box was bone dry. Only after setting the plate on top of the drip tray....pretty much right on top of the fire and setting the temp to 225 did I get good smoke.
Did I do something wrong?.....should I start the chunks with a torch before putting the chip tray on the first rack? Would chips be better? Seem like putting it on the drip pan that low is not right.
Thanks for any help.