Kingsford Lump & the 14.5

I cooked a 6.25 pound pork butt with the 14.5 WSM yesterday.

I knew it would be a long cook & was concerned with having ash from the coals snuffing the fire.
I decided to try Kingsford Mesquite Lump charcoal because it's supposed to produce less ash & burn longer.
I filled the charcoal ring to more than well rounded & did a MM start using 10 lit coals & 4 medium sized chunks of apple wood.
Let things get to temp & the thin blue smoke - about 50 minutes.
After 10 1/2 hours of cooking averaging 260* - 275* the temps started dropping so I added a mini chimney of lit K Lump and was back to 275*.
Kicked things up to 285*.
The meat probed tender about an hour later. It registered between 195* & 203*
So this was a 12 hour cook.

I checked the charcoal bowl & ring this am.
There was enough charcoal left for maybe another hour.
The ash had built up within 1/4 inch of the charcoal grate.
I have raised the charcoal grate & ring about 1" & have used the cooker like this for quite some time.
I usually remove the internal heat shield from the bottom of the smoker for long cooks, but I forgot to do that. That would have made more room for ash.

Anyway, I'm impressed. I'm fairly certain that if I had used KBB I would have had problems with excess ash accumulation around the 8 hour mark.
The mesquite in the lump is a no show - but that's of no concern to me.

Bump.


Robert, how did you raise charcoal grate & ring?

For what it's worth, Royal Oak briquettes seem to produce less ash in my experiments. Franky, I like it better than Kingsford, but lump charcoal works even better at producing less ash (as you have experienced).

Was you smoke wood directly on top of the heap, or was it buried beneath?

These links will help:

http://tvwbb.com/showthread.php?55569-cooking-chicken-on-the-14-5/page2

http://tvwbb.com/showthread.php?63948-More-room-for-ash-14-5&highlight=raise+charcoal+grate

I bury the wood just below the top layer of charcoal. I usually put a big chunk in the center of the ring & arrange the others radially around it. The center one is not buried... it sits in a depression - a "reverse mound" for lack of a better description. I dump the mm lit coals mostly in the center on top the wood chunk.

Robert-R said:

I bury the wood just below the top layer of charcoal. I usually put a big chunk in the center of the ring & arrange the others radially around it. The center one is not buried... it sits in a depression - a "reverse mound" for lack of a better description. I dump the mm lit coals mostly in the center on top the wood chunk.

Click to expand...

I suppose you wait for the belching smoke (creosote) to disperse with this arrangement?

Yep. Takes about 50 minutes or so for the Thin Blue Smoke to arrive.

Robert-R said:

Yep. Takes about 50 minutes or so for the Thin Blue Smoke to arrive.

Click to expand...

Nothing ruins a smoke worse than creosote, although pork butt seems to take it all in stride.

I'll have to experiment with your smoke wood arrangement technique on my 18.5" smoker.