God bless Jim Minion! I won't use anything else other than the Minion method.
AN AUTOBIOGRAPICAL HISTORY:
In 1987 I found a new gadget (gadget??? How naive!), something new to challenge my love of cooking, so I bought my WSM without any knowledge of smoking whatsoever. All I had to go by was the Weber instruction booklet -- have you read the manual? I had some good cooks and some that I wanted to tear my hair out on, never knowing why and what to do to get consistent results.
Fire control? What's that? Don't you just light the coals in the charcoal ring?
Of course, there were no sites then like Chris's fount of information here to guide me through the basics of fire control. Most of our friends don't cook, so no help there....but they do EAT!
With so little information from the Weber manual about how to control the fire, and very inconsistent results, I gave up for a few years and tried to sell my WSM (can you believe that no one bought it through 2 or 3 big carport sales?).
Then home computers came around and I accidentally came across Chris's incredible TVWB site while I was learning how to do searches on the Internet.... and the rest is history.
Thanks, Jim Minion, for not only the Minion Method, but for all the great advice over the years and for making it all come together for me!
Gratefully,
Rita