How to fuel (and time) a marathon session?

[Mary M]

Soooo...I've got half a dozen friends coming to my house tomorrow for a weekend in the country, hiking, biking, whitewater and (of course) barbecue. The centerpiece will be Saturday night dinner featuring pulled pork and ribs, but there will also be plenty of other goodies. I'm trying to figure out the timing and also how to fuel the cooker for all this.

Here's the deal: in addition to the main meats, I also have a couple of slabs of bacon that I need to smoke tomorrow (that's Friday). So, I figured to get them started in the AM and smoke until done. Then around 5 pm, I'd get the cooker going again to put two butts on at around 6 pm and smoke overnight, figuring to finish about noon. Butts come off, more fuel, then put on ribs to smoke while the butts sit in foil in the cooler and think about things. Dinner after the ribs come off and everything gets pulled together (or apart, as the case may be).

Questions:

- I want to get the butts on by 6 pm, which is why I want to start the bacon early -- don't want to cut the timing too fine. But I expect to still have low coals, so I can't exactly do the minion method for the butt cook. How would you refuel, and how will it affect any need to refuel through the night?

- Ditto the ribs. How would you refuel over what would be, at that point, very low coals?

TIA,

 

[Matt Jones]

Add fuel as the cooks go on before the coals get too low or light additional coals outside the smoker and add them with additional unlit fuel as needed or dump the coals between cooks into a safe container like a metal trash can or bucket that you can seal if you want to start fresh for each cook.

 

[K Kruger]

The bacon won't take all day. If you do the bacon early you'll have plenty of time to cool the cooker andMinion the butt start.

Post butt cook I'm with Matt. Choke off all airflow by closing the vents when you pull the butts. Wrap and cooler them then disassemble the cooker, being carefull of the water pan (if using water). Dump the base into or onto something heat-proof (you'll want to get rid of the ash buil-up anyway, especially if using K'ford) then refill the base with fresh coals.
pluck any still-lit from what you dumped and collect in your chimney. Add unlit to them and allow to light. (Don't count small, lit-but-fading coals that you retrieve as whole 'lit' coals for the purposes of the MM start. They're losing energy.)

MM your rib start, load your ribs and cook as planned.

Have a great time with your friends!