Good Morning,
I have a couple of questions about the Stumps Baby smoker that only a fellow owner can answer. Quick background. I owned a Stump's Classic for 12 years and am very familiar with how a Stump's gravity feeder works. I sold the classic to downsize now that I am no longer doing large cooks. I am finding that the Baby is a much different animal than the classic and have ran into two problems. One I finally solved, now trying to solve the second.
The first thing I ran into was charcoal jams. I only had one in 12 years with my classic, but with the Baby, except for the first seasoning burn, I had a 100% failure rate with the next 8 attempts to use it. Solved that problem. My first burn in I used Kingsford charcoal because I saw no reason to use a better more costly charcoal for a first burn in. After that I used Royal Oak Chefs select, B&H, Royal Oak Lump, Royal Oak briquettes. Every one of them jammed the chute causing many phone calls to Danny at Stump's. I discovered that the Kingsford exuded melted wax probably mixed with creosote during the initial burn. That formed hard "lumps" on the surfaces of my chute. I believe with each burn that wax would soften and become like glue. I scraped the chute and now the jams have stopped.
On to the second problem. I have been unable to get clean smoke. No matter what pit temp I use the smoke never becomes clear and leaves an over smoked flavor. Again, never had this problem with my Classic. Since fixing the jam problem I have continued to use the Royal Oak briquettes because of the small size. In my Classic I always used lump charcoal. My initial thoughts were that due to the smaller size of the fire box and chute the charcoal is always igniting new charcoal and so is continually acting like a new burn and never settling down. If that was the case, though, there would be an uproar by other owners. Perhaps this post is premature because today I will see what lump does now that I have a clean chute.
Anyways, if there are any Baby owners out there. I would be interested in what charcoal you are using or if you encountered a similar problem.
I have a couple of questions about the Stumps Baby smoker that only a fellow owner can answer. Quick background. I owned a Stump's Classic for 12 years and am very familiar with how a Stump's gravity feeder works. I sold the classic to downsize now that I am no longer doing large cooks. I am finding that the Baby is a much different animal than the classic and have ran into two problems. One I finally solved, now trying to solve the second.
The first thing I ran into was charcoal jams. I only had one in 12 years with my classic, but with the Baby, except for the first seasoning burn, I had a 100% failure rate with the next 8 attempts to use it. Solved that problem. My first burn in I used Kingsford charcoal because I saw no reason to use a better more costly charcoal for a first burn in. After that I used Royal Oak Chefs select, B&H, Royal Oak Lump, Royal Oak briquettes. Every one of them jammed the chute causing many phone calls to Danny at Stump's. I discovered that the Kingsford exuded melted wax probably mixed with creosote during the initial burn. That formed hard "lumps" on the surfaces of my chute. I believe with each burn that wax would soften and become like glue. I scraped the chute and now the jams have stopped.
On to the second problem. I have been unable to get clean smoke. No matter what pit temp I use the smoke never becomes clear and leaves an over smoked flavor. Again, never had this problem with my Classic. Since fixing the jam problem I have continued to use the Royal Oak briquettes because of the small size. In my Classic I always used lump charcoal. My initial thoughts were that due to the smaller size of the fire box and chute the charcoal is always igniting new charcoal and so is continually acting like a new burn and never settling down. If that was the case, though, there would be an uproar by other owners. Perhaps this post is premature because today I will see what lump does now that I have a clean chute.
Anyways, if there are any Baby owners out there. I would be interested in what charcoal you are using or if you encountered a similar problem.
