Ok, so we cleaned it up, lit the charcoal, and placed it on the left had side (with no grill above it). Soon the temp started to rise inside and we could see by the smoke coming out the vents on the right hand side that the flow was going as expected. We were doing 10 big racks so there was not enough room to lie them down, so we did eight in a row on edge held up by skewers. These went on the far right hand side with the edges of the ribs pointing to the left and right edges of the cooker. The remaining two ribs went in the opposite direction towards the middle, ie. on the little bit of free grate still available.
Then the problems started, judging by putting hand over the right hand side vents, the circulation of air stopped, and the temp at grill level among the meat dropped from 250 to about 110 and would not budge. Peaked under the hood after about a half hour and the rib closest to the coals was taking a beating, the sugar in the rub was darkening while the other groups of ribs still left room temp or so. It was acting like a heat shield. So I mushed down the coals as much as possible and scrunched everyhthing over to the right to increase distance from the coals. Then started a rotation of ribs about every 15 minutes for the next four hours or so. I thought I had a disaster on my hands but after two hours the temp reading started to rise. The worst omen up to that point was when I came out to see that the oven mitts I had left on top of the cover above the coals were smoldering. At that point I thought to myself, everyone is going to remember this cook for a long time but I'm not sure it will be for a good reason.
Anyways, the end of the story is that dinner was about an hour late but the ribs were fantastic. I have a lot of blisters from touching the cooker by mistake.
Makes me appreciate Weber products all the more!
