Ash Buildup in 18.5 WSM


 
M

Mike Buehner

New member
I am new to this forum and a new 18.5 WSM owner. I have experience smoking meat with a Bradley Original Smoker.

Recently, I purchased an 18.5 inch Weber Smokey Mountain Cooker. My first cook was short cook of a whole chicken cut in half and turned out great.

My second cook was two pork butts that weighed a total of 13 pounds and took 19 hours to reach 190 degrees. This cook turned out great and was some of the best pulled pork I’ve had. However, at the end of the cook I had a hard time maintaining a temperature of 225 to 250 degrees. The temperature kept dropping so I had to keep agitating the charcoal briquettes and opening the vents to full. After I shut down the cooker and took the sections apart I found a lot of unburned briquettes and the ash completely filled the area below the grate. I was using Kingsford Original Charcoal, a pan full of water, loaded both pork butts on the top grate, and used the minion method for burning the charcoal.

My questions are:

- Is this normal?
- What is the limitation on how long you can cook cook with this WSM?
- Does the type of charcoal matter when doing a long cook?

I see many posts of people that load up both grates with mixed meats including pork butts and never mention running into a problem with too much ash buildup under the charcoal grate. Any input would be appreciated.

Best regards.
 
Mike,welcome to the forum! There is a lot of great information here,as well as some great people!
Kingsford is great,it will give you lot's of cook time,but it does give off a lot of ash. Just empty the bowl every cook and you will be fine.
 
As Phil said, Kingsford does create a lot of ash. At some point, after you get comfortable with your WSM and Kingsford, you might try lump charcoal. That would cut way down on the amount of ash. Also, any of the various methods of cooking without water in the pan will help, since some of the charcoal you burn goes to boiling and evaporating the water. Again, that's something to consider later on. For now, the advice to empty the ash before every cook is probably your best approach.
 
I know Weber and Kingsford have some kind of arrangement, but K does have an ash problem. I use K because of the price (Memorial Day & Labor Day sales) but I prefer Stubbs (all natural, not much ash) and still use it for longer cooks. When I had an ECB, I couldn't use K at all because there was very little room for ash.
 
Other than for the stink, that's exactly why I use Stubbs briquettes, which I buy at Lowes. They burn more predictably with no cooker leg kicking necessary to knock the ash off, (before I go to bed, OR the next morning.)

So far, my experience with the Stubbs is that one heaping ring will do it unless I've got 30 pounds plus of meat or the weather is less than ideal. I use a $5 Brinkman water pan which holds plenty water to sleep on and allows me to heap my charcoal more.

If you can't find Stubbs, I read that Royal Oak chef's select is good, too, and I know it's available through Doitbest.com stores.
 
Thanks for your replies.

The ash pan was empty before the cook I described in my original post. I'll use the Kingsfor Original for shorter cooks such as ribs and chicken and try lump charcoal for longer cooks.
 
If using lump for long cooks, buy a good dense one and pack tightly, avoiding too many small pieces. Don't expect it to burn as consistantly as briquettes do, however. A lot of folks like to use lump for hi heat cooks, as good lump burns faster/hotter than briquettes.

As to burn time with lump in the wsm, I've done overnight cooks with B&B oak lump two or three times, but don't think that I got a longer burn time than with the Stubbs, maybe even less.

I should've pointed out that you don't get nearly the ash with "natural" briquettes like Stubbs or RO chef's select as you do with Kingsford, and of course, simply pouring it in is a lot easier than packing lump and wondering if your temps will stall because you have too many small pieces.
 
me thinks that you had to burn longer/use more coals because you used water. try without water. also use something other than k.
 
I don't know. I have NEVER had an ash overload problem in my WSM. I had that problem with my first CharBroil smoker, but not the WSM. There should be plenty of room under the grate for a lot of ash.

Maybe it's because I never had to cook anything for 19 hours. Mine are done much faster than that, and I usually cook between 200-225.
 
In addition to using lump or natural briqs (Stubbs, Royal Oak Chef's Select, Rancher) you can add the charcoal grate from an 18.5" Weber kettle turned so the grate is 90 degrees to the original grate, creating a grid.

Doing this and using lump or a natural briq charcoal will give you longer burns and keep the smaller pieces of charcoal from falling through as fast.
 
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