just a few ?

[dozer]

first let me thank all of you, you sure know how to make a guy feel welcome! i did my very first smoke last saturday, just one rack of st louie ribs, and was very frusturated for most of the time.tring to maintain proper heat was difficult. i hovered around 200 and never got over 225. i have an ECB smoker and was using plain ol charcoal. i now know my ash pan needs some holes on the bottom and to use 100% hardwood coal. hopefully that will take care of the heat but? i have two dampers on each side, one top one bottom. how should i set those? having never smoked, or seen it done, i have no idea how much smoke needs to be generated to get good flavor. i was just adding a hand full of chips every hour or so but it seemed to drop my temp every time i did. should i use a box or wrap it in foil? or is it ok to toss it on the fire? the ribs did turn out quite tasty though i was runnin back and forth for the better part of 6 hrs lol. i plan on doing a 5# brisket this weekend and some more ribs so any advice would be greatly appreciated!

 

[TulsaJeff]

Dozer,

I just produced an eBook that I think will answer all of your questions. As I read the post I kept thinking, "yep, that's in there.. yep.. that is too" so maybe just download the ebook and skim through it.

I think doing a few mods to your smoker will help dramatically as well as using the lump charcoal which is all wood with no fillers.

The eBook can be downloaded free here and be sure to post back if you need further help.

You can also subscribe to the free 5-day eCourse which will cover many of the essentials to smoking. More specifically, day 4 which covers smokers and equipment and goes into a little of the "how it works and how I can make it work better" type stuff.

I have heard this said many times here..

Where else can you take up learning a fine art and eat your mistakes along the way? Normally their not half bad!

Good luck!!