Wow! Thanks so much for all the advice, this is all extremely helpful!!
Hoosier1989
&
SmokinAl
I did end up using smaller splits and that certainly helped. Out of interest, how often do you find yourself adding splits then? I seemed to have to be adding them every 15/20 mins or so which is way off the ~45 mins I've read about and watched on Youtube. Also thanks for the advice on just keeping it between 225 - 300, I was getting kinda panicked when the temperature started climbing into the late 200s, but that's great to know.
Thanks
smokerjim
and
C
Chasdev
for the advice, I only saw your advice about standing the split on end after I had finished my cook but will certainly try that next time.
I live in Dublin, Ireland and smoking really isn't that popular here so it's a) difficult to find local people with knowledge about smoking, b) hard to find good smokers, I ended up buying a cheap ~$150 knock off Oklahoma Joe smoker just to get started, c) difficult to find properly seasoned wood that's reasonably priced. For example I want to try smoking with apple wood but it's just so difficult to get here for some reason.
What ended up working for me yesterday was, when adding a new split I would open the vent and firebox door completely, add the split, when it was completely caught I would close the firebox door then slowly close the vent more and more until I just started getting that nice thin smoke. This seemed to work OK but is far from the 'make small adjustments to the vent' advice that I've gotten here and elsewhere. Does this approach sound reasonable?
In the end the results were actually pretty good, I smoked a lovely rack of st. Louis style ribs and 3 beef short ribs :)
Ther ribs after ~2.5 hrs just before I wrapped them for another ~2.5 hrs