I find there is usually something to be done with the meat every few hours anyway...spray, mop, turn, wrap, whatever. I rarely get more than 3 hours sleep at a time on an overnight cook.
Wow. 3hrs of sleep. Good to see that everyone has a different way of doing things. Glad to see that whatever works, works.
I sleep all night on an overnight cook. Be it on my
Rec Tec RT 590, or my 22 in
WSM with
FireBoard 2 Drive controller. Both of these cookers will hold within approximately 5 degrees or so of set point.
The
WSM will run in excess of 15 hrs on a single fuel load of lump charcoal. And that's conservative with the stock fire ring in it. It will run any type charcoal put into it, from B&B Charlogs, to Kamado Joe Big Block, all the way down to Kingsford Match Light were I inclined to use that.
As I no longer spray, never did mop, nor turn, and rarely wrap, and have diminished desire to do any of the aforementioned in the middle of the night in these suburbs having found over the years that they are minimally beneficial to my final results, sleeping all night during an overnight cook, that’s easy for me.
Of course though, all of this said, A
WSM with a controller, or a
Rec Tec and smoke tube would cost
him more than the retail of the smoker he ultimately chose. A $500-$600.00 budget would be tough. I spent more, but I sleep like a baby while getting the smoke flavor that I want and that my
Rec Tec cannot quite consistently match, even with a smoke tube.
But I only state the aforementioned and include the graph and example below, to show that one can indeed sleep all night on an overnight cook using a charcoal smoker, and never have to open it until the food is ready to come off. I put this brisket on the
WSM, let it run all night at 225°F, and finally jacked up my set point to 250°F at around 11:00AM the next morning, never opening the lid nor the fuel door. The graph never dips, until ready to remove the brisket from the smoker, then wrap it and let it rest. No moppin', no spritzin', no turnin', no wrappin' and still get a good result. This one was wrapped only at the end of the cook, and allowed to rest in butcher paper, inside the cooler when it came off.
This brisket was put on the smoker at approximately 10:00 PM. I took it off at 12:24PM the next day. I can't imagine having to get up at 3:00AM-4:00AM to have to go outside, lift a bag of charcoal, potentially with nearby wildlife, or even some knucklehead prowling looking for something to break into, and refill a fuel hopper.
