Too much air flow in my ECB charcoal pan???

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rings44

Newbie
Original poster
I'm looking to do my first boston butt this weekend and wanted to seek some advice.  I feel I have all the bases covered, except this will be the longest smoke I have done so far.

My ECB charcoal pan is literally splattered with 3/8'' holes for ventilation.  This worked great when I did my bacon-wrapped pork tenderloin 2 weeks ago, but I did notice some really high temp. spikes.

This mainly happened when adding more wood CHIPS to my charcoal pan, so for this boston butt, I plan on using chunks to hopefully curb the issue.

In reality, I am wondering if it is possible that I may have drilled too many holes in my charcoal pan?  I also have a round rack insert in the charcoal pan that again, keeps air flowing nicely throughout.

I really want this boston butt to turn out amazing, so I am wondering if I should:

A.) remove the rack insert in the charcoal pan?

B.) Since the charcoal pan is held up on threaded rod, maybe loosen the nuts and lower it a little bit?

C.) Whatever words of wisdom this awesome community can offer

***Keep in mind, I will be using chunks instead of chips this time***

Also, planning on doing my first minion method with kingsford briquettes

I look forward to hearing advice!

Thanks!
 
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The first words of advice is TAKE A BREATH you are over thinking this smoke. I know that you are new to this and we out here are old hats but slow down and let the smoker and the meat do the work. Now you don't have to change everything so that the butt will be tender and yumO. It will just trust us out here. You don't need to get all worked up. Just build the fire and it will smoke just fine and you will be the hero of the block for this one. After all a butt is a very forgiving hunk of meat and it's kinda hard to mess it up.  
 
HAHAHAH!   You sound just like my dad, telling me I'm over-thinking it.  I guess he is right when he says I have a tendancy to do that.  I really appreciate the opinion and I'm just gonna leave everything as-is, and see where it goes.  My buddy told me the same thing about it being tough to mess up a boston butt, but he's also rockin' a WSM and not a modded-out ECB.

Either way, thanks! 
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