Hi All, my first post here. I received my
PBC a couple of days ago and was anxious to try it out. My problem is I have about 20 18 pound bags of Kingsford competition charcoal I bought on sale at Costco. I wrote to Amber at
PBC and she said I could use that but that I should use less. So I tried a little experiment today ( without any meat to ruin). I load the
PBC basket only half full of the competition charcoal and only enough in my chimney to get these started. After 20 minutes in the chimney I dumped it on the charcoal basket in the
PBC, inserted the rebar rods and put a remote thermometer hanging off the rebar. The opening at the bottom was set to 1/2 open. ( I'm at 5000 feet). I put the cover on and waited. Here are the results:
10: 20 added coals to PBC basket - 338 degrees
10:40 -300 degrees
at this point it gave no indication of going lower so I close the vent to 1/4 open
11:00 - 319 degrees
closed the vent all the way which still leaves a small slice open
12:30 - 320 degrees
1:00 - 300 degrees
I have come to the conclusion that the competition charcoal burns way to hot for trying to smoke on the PBC, but might be suitable for grilling. Guess I'll go pick up some original!