Tom Wilson
New member
This past Saturday I slow Q'd some St. Louis style spair ribs and they turned out awesome. However, before I could get them on I had a lot of trouble getting my OTS up to temp. I was shooting for between 230F-250F, but was having difficulty gettin even to 200F.
In the past I've always used fire bricks with about 2/3's of charcoal grill sealed with foil. Then use unlit Royal Oak Lump with three small chunks of appple wood and pore a few lit Kingsford Blue on top (Minion method). My top vent is full open and bottem is adjusted as needed and in this case it was wide open so it should have had more than enough oxygen to get the fire hot.
Lastly, after getting the grill up to temp, I place a water pan above the coals, place the ribs setting in a rib rack on the cook grate.
This time I changed a couple only a couple things. I did not seal of half the charcoal grill, but placed a foil pain on the bottom filled with some flap meat to put in my baked beans and did everything else as usual.
If anything I would think since it had a lot more air flow it would have gotten to temp faster. We had some wind, but lately I've had wind every time I've cooked. It took so long to get the fire up to temp before putting all the food on that I had to add almost half a chimney of briques, before finally getting the tempts to rise. That means I had already used a half chimney of lump and bricks. Perhaps I was just having a strange day.
Any ideas of what could have been the problem?
In the past I've always used fire bricks with about 2/3's of charcoal grill sealed with foil. Then use unlit Royal Oak Lump with three small chunks of appple wood and pore a few lit Kingsford Blue on top (Minion method). My top vent is full open and bottem is adjusted as needed and in this case it was wide open so it should have had more than enough oxygen to get the fire hot.
Lastly, after getting the grill up to temp, I place a water pan above the coals, place the ribs setting in a rib rack on the cook grate.
This time I changed a couple only a couple things. I did not seal of half the charcoal grill, but placed a foil pain on the bottom filled with some flap meat to put in my baked beans and did everything else as usual.
If anything I would think since it had a lot more air flow it would have gotten to temp faster. We had some wind, but lately I've had wind every time I've cooked. It took so long to get the fire up to temp before putting all the food on that I had to add almost half a chimney of briques, before finally getting the tempts to rise. That means I had already used a half chimney of lump and bricks. Perhaps I was just having a strange day.
Any ideas of what could have been the problem?
