New to this . What did I do wrong?


 
J

JimC

New member
I am new to this and tried my first smoke last weekend. A Boston butt and whole chicken things went bad from the beginning. I initially fired one whole webber chimney of kingsford blue bag charcoal. Heat was steady at 250 for about 15 minutes and then it dropped to below200 rapidly. The coals were red hot when I put them in and within 15 minutes they were dead. They did not burn out or dissipate. They just went out and cooled off leaving most of the charcoal remaining on the grate. So as my temp was falling I fired up another chimney and quickly put them in. Again, the same thing happened. Bottom line is I did this continually for 6 hours trying to get this butt cooked and went throu two bags of charcoal. The charcoal was bought at seperate stores so I don't think that was the problem. Had all vents open the whole time. It was unusually windy but from what I have read here that should have made it harder to keep cool. I am sue I did somthing wrong and am hoping some of the expert smokers here will help a greenhorn out. Any suggestions?
 
Welcome Jim.

I'm no expert but here goes:

You said you started with a whole chimney of K.
How much unlit charcoal was there in the charcoal ring?

Also you said all vents were open.
Does that mean the top one also(I hope).
 
my thoughts are the same as jeff_b's. it sounds like you were just using 1 chimney full of charcoal, that is not enough. next time fill the ring up with at least a chimneys worth of unlit and dump a chimney full of lit on top. or you could try the minion method, which is basically the same but you start with fewer lit colas and let the smoker come up to temp gradually.
 
I'm with Jeff and Tony. Here's a link to a page Chris wrote on firing the WSM up in the standard method and the Minion along with some options are on page 2. Hope this helps.

Welcome to the board!
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one chimney of coals will flame out quick if you have all of your vents open.........especially if the wind is whipping through them

the suggestion above to use one lit and one unlit should give you enough time to cook chicken........for the butts,I'd recommend the Minion Method; I used it to cook a beef roast and it kept my WSM going for hours without a lot of attention
 
AS an aside to the good stuff already said ....a fire requires three things...fuel, oxygen, and kindeling temperature. If your coals are going out, at least one of those things is missing or depleted
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With ALL the vents open, for the life of me I can't see how Kingsford briquettes could die out like you described. I'd really like to know what was happening though, so please let us know after you figure it out.
 
Hey guys..Thanks for replying and helping out.I had none in the ring when I started. Only poured the hot ones from the chimney so I had no base. I see now that was one problem.I did have all vents open but mabe just not enough base. Thanks for the link Bill. I will let everyone know how it turns out.
 
Jim - I don't know - I think you've got a WSM that needs to be properly trained. Tell you what, ship it to me and I'll get it in great shape for you -it'll take about a year and I'll send it back to you all trained and ready to smoke!!!
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Jim, Bill is right. Check out the section on firing up your WSM. Don't be discouraged. You'll be BBQ'ing like a pro in no time
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Jim,
Many of us here are great fans of the Minion Method...it is all I ever use. Fill the ring with coals or lump, add about 12-20 lit coals (half a chimney of lump) fully lit, all vents open, shut down most/all (depending on weather conditions) when temp reaches 200 and it will settle in within Q temp for hours and hours with minor adjustments to the vents. For butts, I always start with a full ring (should last 8+ hours), for ribs, maybe 3/4 ring for 6 hours. My advice is to use a full ring and see where that takes you. Don't be discouraged, this is not rock science (as my geologist friend said)...it is just BBQ.
 
Ok..Thanks again for everyones input..I am trying a more simple smoke tomorrow. Ribs. A quicker cook so I can get my confidence up and try the butt again. Will post my vistory pics.
 
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