Brining and briquette question

[Eric V]

I have had great success brining my turkeys and cooking them on my 18 inch WSM. I always like looking through the recipes on this site, and they have raised a couple of questions:

Only one or two of the recipes mentioned letting the turkey air dry for 24 hours in the refrigerator after brining… I have done this for chickens, and had great success getting a crispy skin. Thanks to a continuing battle with CRS, I can’t remember if I have done this with my turkeys. And opinions on this?

Also, Chris has mentioned a couple of different charcoal techniques for turkeys. One is emptying a lit chimney in the pan, then emptying an unlit chimney on top of that and waiting for it to ash over before adding wood and setting up to cook. Under another recipe, I believe a hot and fast turkey, the role is reversed, the unlit chimney is put down first with the lit chimney over it. This seems to be a lot more efficient, am I just worrying too much about the little stuff, or do you think I might have heat/duration problems?

Thank you in advance.

 

[MikeS in Alaska]

Air drying would be a good option if someone didn’t want to rub the skin with oil/butter. I think it could make difficult for the run to stick. Harry Soo has a dry brine technique he uses.
I use a wet brine overnight. Then rinse ( the horrors!) and grease her down with some butter and apply the rub. The bird will go on the WSM within an hour or so.
As to the charcoal. I dump the lit coals on top and assemble the cooker, the bird goes on once I see at least 275 at the grate. I run turkey and chicken in the 325 - 350 range.
Some prefer to get all the coals lit prior to adding the meat due to taste preferences. The initial white smoke of combustion may be off putting.