Dirty smoke


 
K

Keith Engelmeyer

New member
So today and even in the past, I've smoked my trying to use the minion method on brisket or any large piece of meat that requires long and slow cook times. My smoker does not seem to be happy unless its around 280, anything lower and it smokes like a locomotive. I have tried lighting more briquettes thinking not enough fuel to start and running into tempature going to high and cant bring it down without having that bad smoke smell. Tried less and to keep tempature from going so high and get the bad smoke again. Any suggestions is greatly appreciated.
 
I’ve been using Harry Soo’s method of putting the smoke medium on the bottom them loading the charcoal white excellent results.
 
Hi Keith. I certainly agree with your approach of starting with fewer lit coals if you want a lower pit temp. Here in Ohio I can, on average, light approx 8-10 coals during warm weather if I want a pit temp of 250f or a little lower. But if you have air leaks in your WSM it can impact temps. Also; in a perfect world I usually try to choke down the intake vents (where your fuel is) to control temps and keep the exhaust vents wide open. I can approach close to one hour before I see clean smoke after ignition.
 
Keith Engelmeyer said:
So today and even in the past, I've smoked my trying to use the minion method on brisket or any large piece of meat that requires long and slow cook times. My smoker does not seem to be happy unless its around 280, anything lower and it smokes like a locomotive. I have tried lighting more briquettes thinking not enough fuel to start and running into tempature going to high and cant bring it down without having that bad smoke smell. Tried less and to keep tempature from going so high and get the bad smoke again. Any suggestions is greatly appreciated.
Click to expand...
Remember that the WSM is not a stick burner, and operates a little differently. A heavier white smoke is not necessarily "dirty".

I second what else was said about sealing your WSM in order to control lower temps.
 
Brock Gingery said:
Remember that the WSM is not a stick burner, and operates a little differently. A heavier white smoke is not necessarily "dirty".

I second what else was said about sealing your WSM in order to control lower temps.
Click to expand...
Im am currently working on sealing it better. But even during my cook the smoke smells very acidic.
 
Keith Engelmeyer said:
B&B lump charcoal and Kingsford briquettes.
Click to expand...
I have not tried B&B lump but have tried the orange bag briquettes and those are good.
The K is hit and miss as some love it or hate it esp on minion smokes where all the charcoal is not fully lit.
Some are more sensitive and can really pick up on that smell.
Maybe try an all natural briquette or another brand of lump.
 
A late response, but I have battled this quite often over the years, and I solved my problem by putting the smoke wood on the bottom as was mentioned above. It's also important to let the fuel and wood come up to temp until the wood stops smoking, and I have seen that take at least an hour on average.

One trick I do, if the wood keeps smoking beyond my patience, is to place the top grill on the smoker, replace the lid, wait a few minutes, and swipe said grill with a wet finger, and if I taste no creosote, I am good to go.

Some woods like hickory are less forgiving if not treated as above, but woods like cherry may work just fine even if the smoke is still rising.

EDIT: I also use a quality charcoal such as Royal Oak All Natural briquettes, or Royal Oak lump. I am not a big fan of Kingsford unless it is the professional version.

EDIT 2: I also use locally harvested hickory splits (heartwood) in my smoker. The split is about 20" long, but I saw it into and use both pieces. That may sound like a lot of smoke wood, but I've gotten good reviews about my Q.
 
Last edited:
Rusty James said:
A late response, but I have battled this quite often over the years, and I solved my problem by putting the smoke wood on the bottom as was mention above. It's also important to let the fuel and wood come up to temp until the wood stops smoking, and I have seen that take at least an hour on average.

One trick I do if the wood keeps smoking beyond my patience is to place the top grill on the smoker, replace the lid, wait a few minutes, and swipe said grill with a wet finger, and if I taste no creosote, I am good to go.

Some woods like hickory are less forgiving if not treated as above, but woods like cherry may work just fine even if the smoke is still rising.

EDIT: I also use a quality charcoal such as Royal Oak All Natural briquettes, or Royal Oak lump. I am not a big fan of Kingsford unless it is the professional version.

EDIT 2: I also use locally harvested hickory splits (heartwood) in my smoker. The split is about 20" long, but I saw it into and use both pieces. That may sound like a lot of smoke wood, but I've gotten good reviews about my Q.
Click to expand...
You should try my stick burner method. I used to wait 1 hour too until the white smoke settled until I smoked the meat but even so there is no way to get a clean smoke with the low airflow of the stock setup.
 
Emilio Roy said:
You should try my stick burner method. I used to wait 1 hour too until the white smoke settled until I smoked the meat but even so there is no way to get a clean smoke with the low airflow of the stock setup.
Click to expand...
The problem isn't airflow. The problem is more related to fire temperature in addition to fuel source.

In an offset smoker, you are running a hotter fire outside of the cooking chamber. This fire is controlled based on the size of the chamber it is meant to heat at the temperature of burn needed to run clean on seasoned dry hardwoods. Because the fire is burned indirect and separate of the cook chamber, the walls of the fire chamber act as a heat sink to absorb the extra energy produced by the hotter flame along with dissipating some of that energy via air cooling. The remainder of heat and smoke iz then funneled into the cook chamber by creating a pressure vacuum(heat expands, seeks the path of least resistance, creates a negative pressure loop pulling in fresh air behind it.)

The WSM was not designed with this higher temperature in mind concerning the fire chamber is integrated into the cooking chamber. It is indeed possible to attain a "clean, thin smoke" with the WSM. You just have to run your fire at a relatively similar temperature to the fire of an offset, though due to the design of the WSM it results in an understandable increase to the cooking temperature.

The WSM has more than enough airflow to accomplish this, just not in the way the someone running an offset would expect.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

 

Back
Top