I guess I should begin with a little background. I have a homemade vertical smoker. There's a pic of it below. I'm trying to lengthen the burn time of charcoal briquettes so that eventually I can do an all-nighter with nothing but charcoal.
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I wanted to test and document how long my smoker would burn briquettes and what temps I would see at a certain height throughout the burn. For this test, I chose level 3 of the smoker (3rd shelf up from the bottom). Level 3 is 16" up from the charcoal pan.
Of course, I wasn't going to let all that smoke and heat go to waste so I got me a couple pounds of beef ribs and a medium-large potato
. I set a couple of ground rules for myself. 1: No touching or moving the ribs - even if they burned. 2: Turn off the cell phone, have some ice cold brews within easy reach, light up a cigar, and put my little radio on a country station
.
In a nutshell, I put about 15 pounds of briquettes into the coal pan and left a trough in the front for hot coals to begin the creeping burn toward the back side. One thing to note is that I didn't have enough Kingsford on hand so I had to use the cheaper HEB brand briquettes. Remember, I wasn't allowed to move the ribs lower/higher so I was at the mercy of the smoker.
18:50 - put hot coals into trough
20:45 - 250*
21:20 - 350*
21:45 - 350*
22:05 - 325*
22:45 - 285*
23:15 - 250*
23:45 - 230*
00:05 - 215*
Needless to say, a water pan or some sort of buffer would have been beneficial here. I got around 5+ hours of cookable heat and a never-ending supply of the coveted TBS. I thought the ribs had burned beyond recognition - was going to feed 'em to the neighbor's dogs. I pulled the ribs out of the smoker at around 22:40 and let 'em rest for about 30 minutes. Although they were a bit charred on the outside, they were actually very tender and I ended-up eating them all plus half of the potato.......
Thanks for watching
Tom
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I wanted to test and document how long my smoker would burn briquettes and what temps I would see at a certain height throughout the burn. For this test, I chose level 3 of the smoker (3rd shelf up from the bottom). Level 3 is 16" up from the charcoal pan.
Of course, I wasn't going to let all that smoke and heat go to waste so I got me a couple pounds of beef ribs and a medium-large potato
In a nutshell, I put about 15 pounds of briquettes into the coal pan and left a trough in the front for hot coals to begin the creeping burn toward the back side. One thing to note is that I didn't have enough Kingsford on hand so I had to use the cheaper HEB brand briquettes. Remember, I wasn't allowed to move the ribs lower/higher so I was at the mercy of the smoker.
18:50 - put hot coals into trough
20:45 - 250*
21:20 - 350*
21:45 - 350*
22:05 - 325*
22:45 - 285*
23:15 - 250*
23:45 - 230*
00:05 - 215*
Needless to say, a water pan or some sort of buffer would have been beneficial here. I got around 5+ hours of cookable heat and a never-ending supply of the coveted TBS. I thought the ribs had burned beyond recognition - was going to feed 'em to the neighbor's dogs. I pulled the ribs out of the smoker at around 22:40 and let 'em rest for about 30 minutes. Although they were a bit charred on the outside, they were actually very tender and I ended-up eating them all plus half of the potato.......
Thanks for watching
Tom
