What did I do wrong?

My turkey on Thanksgiving came out perfect on the new 22" WSM, I have cooked pork butts on my 18" many times that came out great.

With my 22" and a stoker I put all but a Weber Chimney full of Kingsford Charcoal in the charcoal chamber, lit the chimney let it get full of coals, pored them on the rest of the charcoal and it got too hot.

I ended up having to add water, started with a foiled pan, and still had to close off the top vent after a couple hours of temp going from 300-330. the Stoker was not running, but it was just too hot.

I closed the top vent (only way I could get it to cool down) for 3 hours to bring the temp down to 230 where its staying now.

Target on the stoker was set to 225, but I lowered it to 200 after a couple hours of 300 temps.

The other 2 vents are closed, but even now after 8 hours It still is at 238 with the stoker set to 200.

Did I start with too many hot coals?

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by d kyser:
Did I start with too many hot coals? </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

That would be my guess. I did an overnight last night and started with 15 lit coals without any temp issue. Isn't a full chimney somewhere around 100 coals? Way overkill. I have an 18 but can't imagine the dynamics of the 22 would be that much different.

FWIW, I also don't have a stoker.

Well that was only part of the problem, I just realized I did not have the bottom of the door seated correctly. While the top of the door was fine, all looked good, when I just went to add charcoal, I noticed a large gap, so it was getting air that I did not know about.

Lessons learned.