Burning Man Smokers w/Pics


 
Holy Pork.. I wish my house was that organized...
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I spent some time in Mexico a few weeks ago with a friend who just returned from Burning Man. He managed to get out with a really sweet girl ... no Brian report. He must've been assimilated.
 
Hi there. Yes. Whew. I never submitted a report. I will gather together what I can and post some photos. Of course, I am now getting ready to go back to Burning Man and do it all over again.

What I learned last summer was almost too difficult to put into words - certainly not when I got back. I kept meaning to post about my experiences, and I just couldn't bring myself to do it.

Among other items, I smoked 600 lbs of pork butt in the windiest conditions you could imagine. I had to burn logs into coals, prep and inject each round of meat, pull the current batch off the smoker and wrap it so it could rest, put the prep'd meat on the smokers, and the pull the batch that was finished resting, while tending to the constant sauce production. Then, depending on the time of day, we gave away the freshly made bbq or I would foodsaver it for serving later on that day.

I basically did not sleep - ever.

I was so burned out when I got back, I stayed away from smoking pork butt (and felt a new love for beef). (Plus the whole thing seemed kind of silly in the context of Katrina and I didn't really feel like talking about.)

But slowly I was pulled back in and have been perfecting my pulled pork as best I can for the last couple of months in anticipation of entering my first competitions this year in July, plus my second bbq adventure at Burning Man.

The most important thing I learned is that you treat the small stuff very differently when you are smoking mass meat all day and all night. When you are just smoking a butt or two in the WSM, every little detail seems important, and little things seem like a big deal. Hell, one time I forgot to dry rub 1/2 of an entire batch (8 butts) and no one could tell all that much.

Frankly, I came to doubt that injecting really made that much of difference either - because I missed a butt on more than one occasion and the difference was slight. In a competition that slight difference might be all the difference, but when you are serving to hundreds of people who just want to eat some good bbq, no complained.

Apparently people were pretty excited about it all, and we even got written about in a San Francisco newspaper article covering the foodies that attended burning man. Some one who claimed to be a KCBS certified judge told me I would do well in competition, and though I wasn't quite sure his claimed credentials were authentic, it was a nice compliment anyway. I had several people very enthusiastically lose their minds when they discovered what I was doing. They were all from the Carolinas and from Texas (though one texas guy lectured me on calling anything other than brisket bbq, but I told him to shut up and that was that). Of course the plot twist for them was that I was from NYC - a pretty funny gimmick that had this North Carolina guy stare at me slack-jawed like I was an ape escaped from a magical island. I even had some bbq groupies. It was pretty insane.

Anyway, I don't really have that many pictures, but I will post the family-friendly photos as soon as I get a chance.

This year we are giving away about 500 lbs of pork and then about an equal amount of tri-tips.

I an starting to get vertigo just thinking about it...
 
I'm curious to see the pics.

Burning Man is that festival out in the desert outside California, correct?

I've heard it attracts some eccentric types, to put it mildly.
 
Bryan, how did the temp control go on the magnum? I just built one and have yet to use it. I ordered 3 wsm dampers from weber. I am going to drill out the kettle just below the charcoal grate to mimic the wsm air control. I am hoping that will make it easy to control the temps.

I have read that others that have built it have a hard time controlling the temps. I don't recall if you posted your experiences in this thread or not.
 
Originally posted by Jeff T Miller:
Bryan, how did the temp control go on the magnum?
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It was very challenging, but I was in a very challenging environment being in the desert. The winds would get to be over 40 mph and so every little air leak in the smokers was greatly magnified.

The real issue was fuel consumption. Because of the winds, it would just blaze through the wood and lump charcoal. I had to constantly tend to a firepit to keep shoveling coals into the smokers. I felt like I was on a coal powered steam locomotive.

By about the 4th round of smoking, I got pretty good at knowing how much fuel to add and when; so as long as I could keep the fuel coming, I could keep it right around 215 degrees.

I would say of all the advice I could give you about your magnum, the most important is make it as air tight as possible when all your vents are closed - especially if you are smoking 900lbs of pork in the windy desert!
 
Bryan,

I enjoyed looking at your original post and from time to time wondered how it went for you. thanks for posting the finish to this great story.

jd
 
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