Labor Day cook - overcoming problems

[Jeff Padell]

I decided to do a brisket flat, 2 rack of St Louis ribs, and a 7 pound pork butt on my 22.5

I started the fire at 8 am in the chimney and then poured in a 20 pound bag of KBB with a can in the center. Added the lit to the center and pulled the can.
I had the vents wide open and decided to run up to BJ's to get the ribs. May not have been the smartest move.

People say you cannot get a WSM up over 350, well mine was running close to 450 by the time I got back! All the coal was involved.

I added water to the pan and tried to cool it down, closing the vents. I then put on the butt (about 10:30, at 12 added the flat and at 1 added the ribs, it was now running 225-235
after about 2 hours, 6 1/2 hours into the cook the temp started dropping quick, I looked inside and most of the KBB was ash. I lit more and added half a chimney, no gook so I put unlit about a whole chimney in and some Cowboy lump. Got the temp up to 250 and it ran there till I pulled the ribs and flat at 5 pm - they came out fine.
The butt I pulled about 7:30 and it was fine.

This is the first time I have had a problem with the WSM and it was my fault leaving for an hour wide open!

 

[Gordon LW]

I decided to do a brisket flat, 2 rack of St Louis ribs, and a 7 pound pork butt on my 22.5

I started the fire at 8 am in the chimney and then poured in a 20 pound bag of KBB with a can in the center. Added the lit to the center and pulled the can.
I had the vents wide open and decided to run up to BJ's to get the ribs. May not have been the smartest move.

People say you cannot get a WSM up over 350, well mine was running close to 450 by the time I got back! All the coal was involved.

I added water to the pan and tried to cool it down, closing the vents. I then put on the butt (about 10:30, at 12 added the flat and at 1 added the ribs, it was now running 225-235
after about 2 hours, 6 1/2 hours into the cook the temp started dropping quick, I looked inside and most of the KBB was ash. I lit more and added half a chimney, no gook so I put unlit about a whole chimney in and some Cowboy lump. Got the temp up to 250 and it ran there till I pulled the ribs and flat at 5 pm - they came out fine.
The butt I pulled about 7:30 and it was fine.

This is the first time I have had a problem with the WSM and it was my fault leaving for an hour wide open!

Did you start with a full pan of water? with water and the vents wide open I would expect 300 or so. without water well..........

 

[Jeff Padell]

I added water AFTER it spiked. I was going to do the cook without water but need to get the temp under control

 

[BJSteere]

1) Any smoker can reach 500+ degrees, ultimately it all depends how much lit coal is in the container. In your case somehow most of all your coal was lit therefore, causing a huge spike in temperature.
2) The reason it dropped after you added the water is because you added another heat absorber. Most of the heat went into the pan to boil your water, because of that less heat was absorbed by the temp gauge and the meat.
3) The second reason it dropped is because at first you spiked it and used up a lot of the coal, then when you closed the vents you killed your coal and the heat therefore, requiring more coal in order to keep the temperature up. Think of it this way, your smoker is an oven, when everything goes right it takes less energy to maintain the temp, when you open up your oven door and release the heat more energy is required to bring the temp back up. When you spiked it you utilized all your energy, when you attempted to bring it down by adding the water, not only did you add an additional heat absorber you also did not have enough heat/fire to bring the temp back up. Because of this your coal turned to ash quicker, also because the coal was originally burning quicker than normal from the original spike.