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^. BUT, I thought most people advise letting your wood stop burning from the initial light in favor of the smoldering, light blue smoke afterward. Therefore, I generally wait ten mins or so after initial light to put cold meat on the WSM.

To add more charcoal, I use a fireplace shovel through the door.

Matt, odd question: why did you wrap your uncooked butt with clear wrap, as opposed to just placing it in a Ziploc or even leaving it unprotected in the fridge or something? I know most people wrap the butts, but have always wondered if there is something more than that it is just a convenient...

^ the "redder" suggestion isn't precisely the sauce, rather the appearance of the rib itself. The generally accepted "ideal" look on a rib is shiny almost fire engine red as opposed to a darker color (brown, dark red). In my opinion, the darker colors usually occur if you cook them too long...

Welcome to the addiction, Andres. For your first comp, I'd recommend sticking to your already-existing rub/sauce/glaze recipes. For my first comp, I didn't have a clue and didn't do overly well, but at least I had a base method to tweak from (i.e. sweeter, more tender, redder). It's been my...

For comps, I've always used a Boston butt about 8 lbs each. I recently experimented with doing a HH (275-285) cook and did so with some smaller butts (say about 5 lbs each). I really liked the way that turned out and really enjoyed the shortened time of the cook. I think that competition...

Kudos. Nice smoke ring. I recently tried my first HH butt smoke and was very, very impressed with the effort. I learned too that after it was done steaming in the foil, to just open it up and let it hang out on the counter for an hour or so to firm up the bark. I saw you used the mustard...

In my few comps, I've found rib presentation to be the most difficult, particularly the slicing. I have the hardest time locating the bone and lining up my cut to achieve that even cutting and sizing. I've got a decent slicing knife, but I have noticed most go with the electric knife. Any...

As per Minion, I do it both ways and have found little difference. Sometimes I pour the lit coals into a center profile and sometimes, I just spread the lit coals evenly on top. Very little difference from what I've detected. The key is determining how many lit coals to put in the MM.

^ Well, I think the debate is a fair topic for this board. I'm guilty of following the Pitmasters recipes (including the squeeze margarine), because, you know...they're pit masters! With that said, I agree with the discomfort since I'm of the belief that margarine is worse than butter. Its a...

I'll weigh in with my review of the thermapen: I bought one on sale expecting temp reads of 1-3 seconds. Mine is not that fast. It rises just like any therm, just much quicker. My thermapen takes about 6 seconds to reach the temp. I even called and complained and they told me everything was...

When smoking butts to "perfection", it seems like the money muscle portion falls apart just as the rest of the butt. That poses a problem for presentation/slicing of the money muscle. My conclusion is that one should try to slice the money muscle before that point, maybe when internal temps...

Steven, looks good. Question: did you notice a difference in tenderness b/w the two? I think many of us get these two packs and rarely are they similar. I see from the bottom pic that one was bigger, but seemed to have more marbling while the other was smaller but leaner. Did you trim...

I will give you my experience from doing a comp last year with one 18.5: we only had butts and ribs, but the biggest problem was the transition. I started with butts on top with little to no problem for about 10 hours. Then came the transition to add ribs. In the process of moving the butts...

Ryan, pay attention to what Chad said. It is critical on these WSMs to have an approximation of the grate temps, since the dome therm doesn't measure that. It gets even more complicated when considering temps for top versus bottom grate. Each WSM has its own personality in this regard. You...

Chris, all good posts here and I'll offer one more: anytime you do a multi-meat cook, be careful of cross-contamination and especially with poultry. Therefore, most folks on here would suggest always put the chicken and poultry on the bottom grate to avoid bloody chicken juices falling on top...

Experiment. While unscientific, I used a turkey fryer therm and tried to figure it out myself by sticking it in through the top vents and the hatch. In fact, I found that the bottom grate was about 10 degrees hotter than the top grate, with the bowl in place. Most folks tend to echo Dwain...

Tim (or anyone else): two questions: for fruit wood with a higher fructose/moisture content, at what rate would it degrade? For instance, is one year post-cut too long to generate much flavor? Second question: as wood seasons/dries out, is it logical then just to add more wood at the start...

B Brock, I'll give you my two cents on my 18.5: I think its perfect for small groups (<8). I've gotten two 8 lb butts to fit on top as well as three racks of BB (not at same time of course). With that said, it is a very tight squeeze. General thought would be to use both top and bottom...

Hey folks, I posted this question in a dormant forum section, so I'm reposting here. I have a question about glazing ribs: most glaze recipes seem pretty good at adding shine (which is what I'm going for), but each has a large amount of sugar, honey, or other sweet ingrediants. I tend to put a...