Assuming you don't have a charcoal basket, lay out your charcoal one at a time, don't just pour the bag into the charcoal chamber. It takes about 5 minutes to lay each one flat and you will greatly increase your burn time. If you can, get a bag of the Kingsford Mesquite, that's a wonderful charcoal for beef ribs, and you get blue smoke immediately after getting your SJ-Mini going. Good luck and take some photosThanks. I will be doing my build tomorrow and smoking something Sunday. Probably beef ribs.
I'm 100% Briquets guy, never really got into Lump. I think it's because a small piece popped out of my chimney and I stepped directly on it with bare feet and that sucker burned at least 10 seconds before I could finally dig it out of my foot.....still burningAdd that in with lumped charcoal or 100% briquets?
I use a 12.5" clay pot holderWhat did you use for the heat sink/grease catcher?
I have 3 grates in total in my Mini. One 3" from the bottom where my diffuser sits, only 3 inches above the diffuser grate and then one 4" above the middle grate. It's not too often I use my middle grate, maybe a half dozen times in all the years I've had it. However, I recently did rolled ribs in my mini, and that's a cook I'll likely do again, when only doing a rack or two, so my lower grate would compare to your 4" down from the top, and is going to see more use than it has in the pastChuckO any particular reason you mounted your top grate higher up? I was going to mount mine 4 inch's down.