WSM 18 not staying lit


 

BrianJ

TVWBB Member
I'm stumped! I've had the meat on the WSM for 75 mins and had to relight it three times already. All vents are wide open, I have a full chimney lit plus another full unlit under it with four chunks of cherry wood. I even put a fan outside to aid with airflow, still went out. I have the door propped open now. What else could be the issue??
 
(More info) i have the water pan in, lined with foil, with water in it. I have two racks of ribs, one on each rack.
 
I'm thinking it had something to do with the air flow. Once I left the door off, it was rolling. Then proceeded to get too hot and too smoky. Ha! I can't win today. Moved the ribs over to the kettle.

This was my first attempt at the WSM, and obviously was a failure. Maybe I have an issue with the water pan blocking the air flow up? I dunno...process of elimination I guess.
 
I'm stumped! I've had the meat on the WSM for 75 mins and had to relight it three times already. All vents are wide open, I have a full chimney lit plus another full unlit under it with four chunks of cherry wood. I even put a fan outside to aid with airflow, still went out. I have the door propped open now. What else could be the issue??

Your Year 2006 WSM "Classic" middle section may be "out-of-Round".
 
I would have to lean towards an charcoal issue as Geo suggested. It's highly unlikely that a full chimney lit would be going out three times in the first 75 mins of cooking.
 
You have an 06 WSM listed in your sig and this was your first attempt? Was that a typo or did you buy it used? Reason I ask is you mentioned the water pan might be blocking air-flow, and that could a problem on the newer 18.5" WSM's built after 09 or so which uses the charcoal bowl from a SJ instead of the lid.

Tim
 
No smoke, heat dropping, very little heat, I mean...it's out or on the verge of going out when I get to it to revive it. If I stoke the coals, it comes back a bit. But the first time it was completely out and had to use another wax fire starter.
 
I received a third-owner hand me down for Father's Day, it's a 2006 per the two digit alpha code on the dampener. Yes, it was my first time on a WSM. The bowl is black and metal. I lined it with foil before putting water in the bowl. When I filled the bowl, no water spilled over to put the fire out. When I eventually left the door off completely, the WSM stayed lit.
 
Nice Father's Day gift!
I would agree that you might of had a bad batch of charcoal.Even a brand new bag from the store can get uncooperative if it has a small tear or hole and more-so if it's humid out.
First time, you foiled the inside of the pan and added water.. that could make a difference if you have small pinholes in the foil. Water gets trapped between the foil and pan, and just like putting a lid on a boiling pot water will boil over.
Try a cook with no water, just an empty foiled pan and see if it dies on you again.

Tim
 
Timothy, I didn't even think about that the water may have been boiling over...that's a definite possibility. The bad charcoal could also be the issue like a few others said, so I'll get another bag too. I'll try a dry run next cook with the same briquettes and see if it was the water. Then I'll try with new coals, try to narrow it down. Thanks everyone who gave some suggestions. If I figure it out, I'll let y'all know.
 
No smoke, heat dropping, very little heat, I mean...it's out or on the verge of going out when I get to it to revive it. If I stoke the coals, it comes back a bit. But the first time it was completely out and had to use another wax fire starter.

Ah, Are you lighting it with just a wax fire starter in the WSM? If so it'll take a long while for it to get hot. Once the starter goes out you have to wait for the fire to spread to other coals.

You need to get some coals lit in a chimney starter, then dump them into the WSM on a pile of un-lit coals.

Search for the 'minion method' to read more.
 
Dustin, this is what I did. Used a full chimney with two wax starters that went for 40 mins before dumping them into the bin with more unlit coals and four chunks of cherry wood. The chimney was ashed over. Then built the WSM, had one vent fully open and cracked the other two with the top dampener open full, poured water into the bowl and let the fire go for another 20ish mins before putting the food on. Thanks Dustin
 
Gotcha. Yeah, sounds like either bad charcoal or maybe boiling over the water as mentioned before. I was just making sure you weren't using a single wax starter inside the WSM to get the fire going. Let us know once you get it sorted out!
 
If your charcoal ashed over in the chimney I would be inclined against the idea of it being bad. If it was bad it should have gone out as soon as the starter cubes went out. (BTW, newspaper works just fine if you do it right. Roll a single sheet of newspaper into a squashed tube. I do it like I was rolling a bandanna. Then fit the tube of paper around the inner perimeter of the bottom of the chimney. It doesn't have to be perfect. Just be sure there's a hole in the center. Repeat with another sheet of newspaper. What you want is newspaper around the perimeter with a hole in the center of the chimney. This will draw properly and have the charcoal going in no time. I had nothing but trouble with my chimney starter until I learned this technique.)

You were obviously getting more than sufficient air flow through the WSM. Most of the time I find I'm closing the bottom vents almost all the way to keep it from getting too hot. If your vents are working, you're getting enough air.

That leaves water spilling from the pan as the culprit. I've heard of this potential problem when foiling the pan but have never witnessed it, probably because I don't place that much emphasis on keeping everything spotless. If you're going to put water in the pan, don't foil it. As long as you don't let it boil dry there's no need for the foil anyway. If you're going to run it dry, foil is a good idea. You can end up with a real baked on mess otherwise.

Give it another try without the foil in the pan. I'll bet it works okay.
 
If your charcoal ashed over in the chimney I would be inclined against the idea of it being bad. If it was bad it should have gone out as soon as the starter cubes went out. (BTW, newspaper works just fine if you do it right. Roll a single sheet of newspaper into a squashed tube. I do it like I was rolling a bandanna. Then fit the tube of paper around the inner perimeter of the bottom of the chimney. It doesn't have to be perfect. Just be sure there's a hole in the center. Repeat with another sheet of newspaper. What you want is newspaper around the perimeter with a hole in the center of the chimney. This will draw properly and have the charcoal going in no time. I had nothing but trouble with my chimney starter until I learned this technique.)

You were obviously getting more than sufficient air flow through the WSM. Most of the time I find I'm closing the bottom vents almost all the way to keep it from getting too hot. If your vents are working, you're getting enough air.

That leaves water spilling from the pan as the culprit. I've heard of this potential problem when foiling the pan but have never witnessed it, probably because I don't place that much emphasis on keeping everything spotless. If you're going to put water in the pan, don't foil it. As long as you don't let it boil dry there's no need for the foil anyway. If you're going to run it dry, foil is a good idea. You can end up with a real baked on mess otherwise.

Give it another try without the foil in the pan. I'll bet it works okay.

I was thinking about this earlier and I used the same charcoal on the kettle to finish off the ribs, so the charcoal issue is most likely not the culprit. I'll test the water pan theory next smoke. It'll probably be later this week or next week. Thanks for the long explanations JayHeyl. I really appreciate y'all helping diagnose this
 
Be sure to wrap the foil tight to the water bowl so there is a air gap between the bowl and the outer wall of the mid section. As someone else said, try without water
 
Well, it was the water pan. I figure I just had too much water in there and it was boiling over and putting out the fire. I replaced it with a pizza stone and cooked without water, ribs came out great! Thanks everyone for the suggestions and lookin out for this newbie.
 

 

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