My first smoke attempt (not a great success)

[setroc]

Hi everyone,

I bought my first smoker last week, the bargain Callow premium smoker which has been reviewed on here. Keen to try out my new toy I fired it up for its first cook yesterday to make some nice pulled pork shoulder. Unfortunately, I chose a terrible day to do my first smoke as it started raining about 30mins after lighting the coals, and became heavy rain which lasted the rest of the day within about an hour and a half. I think this resulted in a bit of a trial by fire.

First smoke.jpg

• setroc
• May 21, 2017

I recorded the temperatures throughout the smoke and annotated with all of the actions I took. I used the minion method with aussie heat beads to start the smoker going - I didn't weigh the coals but once the lit coals were poured in it was enough to fill the tray. The first thing that surprised me was how open I needed to keep the vents to prevent the temperature from dropping. I followed WSM logic to 3/4 close the four vents about 10 degrees before the desired temperature, but the temperature quickly stalled so I reopened them to half and it kept on going. Once the food was in (perhaps a bit too early?) I could never really get the temperature as high as I wanted it, even after fully opening all the vents quite early on. After biting my nails at the double problem of still having all my vents fully open and the temperatures not being as high as desired I decided to put some lit coals in using the hot squat method, so I lit just under half a chimney of briquettes. This ended up adding to my woes as when I was putting the top section back on, I spilled water on the coals dropping the temperature further. It did recover and gave me some decent time at the desired temps. When the temps started to drop again I decided to use some more remedial lit coals as a last ditch attempt to keep the smoker alive. At this point the charcoal tray was overfull, but I didn't know what else to do. As the temperatures started to plummet below 100 again an hour or so later I called it a day and wrapped the shoulder to finish off in the oven.

The meat was still good and had a nice 1cm deep smoke ring, but none of that proper bark that I craved so dearly. I don't know if the weather could cause all the problems I experienced but next time I think I'll check the forecast in advance. If anyone has any insight in to what went wrong, I'd love to hear your thoughts.

 

[wade]

Hi Setroc

Great post and good logging and narrative 

I have cooked a few times on the Callow now and have found that by using the standard Minion method it does take a long time to get up to temperature - but once it is there it is very steady. To compensate I have been using about 1/3 of the coals fully lit in the centre at the beginning. Yes, the vents do need to be more open than I expect with the WSM or ProQ. To keep it at ~110 C I find that they remain about 1/2 open -sometimes a little more. I suspect that the air vents actually need to be a little larger and located further down. I may try to do a mod on mine at some point to see if enlarging the bottom vent holes has any effect.

Yes the rain will have had a significant effect. The Callow is quite small and therefore has a larger surface area to volume ratio than the larger smokers. Heat escaping through the slack door seal would also not help in the rain or wind, 

As the smoke only really adds to the flavour for the first 3 hours or so, finishing off in the oven is no different to foiling it in the smoker after the first 3 hours. Good call on your part to use the oven and I am pleased that it turned out well.

I fully understand what you mean about the charcoal bowl getting over full in an attempt to raise the temperature - I have had that too. I found that starting off with a much higher %age of lit coals in the centre helps to avoid this. I think this can be addressed by improving the air flow through the bottom vents. I will see if Callow will let me have a replacement base to try some mods on.

If the next time you cook you try something that affects its performance (positively or negatively) be sure to post it so that we can all benefit from your experience.

Cheers

Wade

 

[setroc]

Thanks for the insight. Having heard reports that the WSM temps are largely unaffected by rain I was a tad concerned, but I never would have guessed that volume : surface area was a key difference here. Next time I'll make sure it's a good day, then I'll follow your tips and compare the results. I'll be sure to keep logging the cooks as I suspect this is going to be key to improving, and I'll keep posting my experiences in this thread too. Hopefully they are a bit more boring next time :)

 

[setroc]

Well, the forecast for yesterday was a clear day in the high teens. So I went to costco, picked up some baby back ribs and planned Smoke #2 using the 2-2-1 method. Unfortunately the ribs were shiner city, but I don't have a butchers anywhere near me so had to make do. With the ambient temperature at a nice level, the smoke went a lot better, but there were still a few moments that left me scratching my head.

smoke 2.jpg

• setroc
• May 29, 2017

Again to get good temps I left the vents fully open for the whole cook, except for once while it was getting up to temperature (a mistake which saw the temps instantly drop) and then later when the top grill hit 112. Now the confusing part was in the first stage of the cook, which was supposed to be 2hours of smoking unwrapped. When I put the ribs in the temperatures really took a hit and dropped down to 75ish and took a long time to recover. It didn't feel like I took an unreasonable amount of time to add in the food, so I'm not really sure why this happened. When temps did recover the probes were showing up to 15C difference in temperature between the two grills. I readjusted the bottom probe several times during this stint just in case it was touching something or not fully in the BBQ, but it didn't affect the readings. Due to this and the extra hour it took the BBQ to heat back up, I extended the first part of the smoke to 3 hours instead of 2.

For the second and third parts of the smoke it was all plain sailing. I'm assuming this temp difference must have been some sort of sensor anomoly and it's not actually possible for the 2 grates to be 15C apart.

Ribs came out fantastic, I'll definitely be doing this again, hopefully with some meatier ribs though if I can find them.

 

[molove]

What do you use to do your logging?

 

[setroc]

I just keep track of it manually in excel 2010 and make a scatter plot at the end, and add in the annotations.

 

[molove]

 
I just keep track of it manually in excel 2010 and make a scatter plot at the end, and add in the annotations.

You're a better man than I!

 

[wade]

 
I just keep track of it manually in excel 2010 and make a scatter plot at the end, and add in the annotations.

Excel is a wonderful tool. I import the data from my temperature logger into Excel to produce my graphs. 

 

[smokin monkey]

Wade, how did you get on with that new data logger?

 

[wade]

It arrived while I was on holiday. I had a quick look in the box when I got home last night but have not switched it on yet.