Rotating the meat in the smoker??

[raven1911]

Did my first smoke yesterday with 3 racks of ribs and a fantastic tritip. Noticed the bottom rack of ribs cooked too much as I didn't turn them or rotate them in the smoker. The tritip stayed on the bottom rack and cooked there the entire 3 hours and did very well. I guess my newbie question is, do you need to turn the meat? Do you also need to rotate the meat from higher racks to lower and vice versa? I decided to put this in the newbie forum and the general as well.

 

[fatback joe]

Whether or not you need to move things around and how often you need to move them will depend on your smoker and the hot spots that you may have.

By your post I am guessing you have a vertical smoker and would say that you probably need to rotate them around from bottom to top to even things out. Have you checked to see how much temp difference you got from top to bottom?