Cold Weather Smoking...


 

Forrest Joyner

TVWBB Member
Merry Christmas to All....

By request, I'm doing a first ever pork shoulder for Christmas Eve dinner tomorrow night. Certainly not my first pork butt by any means, but first over the holidays.

The butt goes on tonight around midnight. I can usually 'set it and forget it' with my 18.5" WSM and it will go perfectly for 12+ hours with no attention by me at all. However, that's when the ambient temp outside is at least 50+ degrees. Tonight will be in the teens with maybe a little snow.

My cooker will be just outside the garage door, so blocked from the wind, but not much of the cold. The only other curveball, is that I'm using lump charcoal tonight (didn't realize I was out of my usual Kingsford). Lump usually burns hotter, but that also means it usually will burn out, in my experience, sooner and need to be re-stoked.

It will be an interesting night. I don't think I'll get as much sleep as a normally would with an overnight smoke.

I'll post back with results in case anyone is interested.

Forrest
 
Good luck.

I am going to attempt to smoke a turkey for dinner tomorrow and the temperatures just dropped in the last week and it’s looking to be about -21 degrees celcius out there tomorrow for the high. I have it blocked from the wind pretty good and the wife picked up an extra bag of Weber charcoal to use but I will likely have to finish it up in the oven. I am predicting an epic failure.
 
I am going to attempt to smoke a turkey for dinner tomorrow and the temperatures just dropped in the last week and it’s looking to be about -21 degrees celcius out there tomorrow for the high. I have it blocked from the wind pretty good and the wife picked up an extra bag of Weber charcoal to use but I will likely have to finish it up in the oven. I am predicting an epic failure.
If you're going for high temp with the turkey, prop the top open a bit if it doesn't want to come up to temp. I had to do that at Thanksgiving to keep it near 350F. That single exhaust vent on the 18.5" WSM sometimes just isn't big enough.
 
Results.....would post a photo or two, but...I see no option except for a URL

Mine turned out well, but I had to tweak things. The temp came up quickly due to the lump burning quicker and hotter as I figured. It all went on a 10:00 p.m. At 1:00 a.m., everything was fine, running a little hot, about 260F, but I let it go. At 3:00 a.m. the temp had dropped to about 210F, so I added some more lump and opened the vents a little more than 1/8" all around. I missed my wake-up alarm at 5:00 a.m., so when I did get out there about 9:00, temp was around 200F, but meat temp was about 160F. I foiled it and brought it inside and finished 2 hours more in a 200F oven until the meat temp was 195. It turned out perfect, just needed a little more TLC than usual.

:wsm22:
 

 

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