Second smoke, some temp problems

[Al_G]

For the holiday I had some friends over and did three slabs of St. Louis style ribs. I ended up doing the ribs three different ways, 2 racks were coated in Bone Sucking Sauce rub, and the third in the Hot Bone Sucking Sauce rub. Cooked the ribs for 2 1/2 hours and then foiled them for 1 1/2. At the foil step, rubbed some brown sugar on both sides, drizzled with honey and added about 3 tablespoons of apple juice to each foil packet. After the foil cook time was up, they were already at fall off the bones tender. Pulled them from the foil and put KC Masterpiece BBQ sauce on one of the regular rubbed racks, Famous Dave's Devils Spit on the one with the hot rub and left the third dry. Everyone liked them and I thought they were very tasty and the meat had great flavor.

I am glad that I went with the 22.5" Weber Smokey Mountain, didn't have to use a rib rack or roll them. Also tossed foiled wrapped baked potatoes with some salt and butter into the lower rack when I put the ribs in, and they were very tender.

I did have some temp control issues, which I'm hoping are just because it is only the second smoke on this WSM. I'm using a DigiQ DX to control the temps. I fired the smoker up using the minion method, two bottom vents closed and the pit viper half closed, the other two holes were taped over. To get the temp up I left the top vent fully open until it got to about 220F and then closed it almost all the way. I had to play with the vent throughout the cook, at one point the temp dropped to around 225, with a target of 275. The pit viper was running full bore and it just wouldn't go up, opened the top vent to maybe 20% and it climbed and held at 275 until I pulled the lid to do the foil. As expected my temps were over 400 by the time I was done foiling. Temp settleded down but after about an hour it started to hover around 300. Closed the vent almost all the way and it went back to 275.

One thing I'm thinking that is making it hard is the door is a pretty poor fit. I do have a gasket kit and will be installing it. I see smoke coming out the door and can only assume more oxygen is getting in. The other is I have seen people talk about needing a few smokes to get optimal performance so I hope that is the other solution.

I only got a couple of before pictures. With friends over, I just didn't have the time to take more.

 

[Rick Body]

I don't know anything about the operation of the DigiQ, but a clean smoker will definitely leak some air, making it harder to regulate temps. After a few cooks, it will start to seal itself

 

[J Hoke]

You can hand bend the door to help the fit. I think they get flattened in shipping somewhat. I try to shut all vents for a few minutes before I know I will be opening the lid. Also, don't try to do anything while the lid is off. take it off and put it back on as quickly as possible. Take the ribs, etc. off to work on them. Try to leave top vent fully open until meat is wrapped. Closing all the way can get the bad smoke (a smoldering fire). Once wrapped, it doesn't matter.

Try to not cook in the sun. That will cause temp spikes. I've had the WSM hit 150 without any heat in it when sitting in the sun.

Finally, don't get too hung up on the temps. Remember, some people cook at 300+ on purpose.

It takes about 10 cooks to season a new WSM so be patient.

 

[Bob Sample]

Damper your fan and leave your top vent open as much as possible. If the top vent's closed then nothing's coming in the bottom vent no matter how hard your fans going, it's just pressurizing the cooker.

 

[Chad Bman]

I don't know anything about the operation of the DigiQ, but a clean smoker will definitely leak some air, making it harder to regulate temps. After a few cooks, it will start to seal itself

^^^ This! Cook a big ol' pork butt and that'll help speed up the process because they take ~12 hours. That's a lot of smoking time to break it in.