Venting: Top or bottom first?


 
A

Aaron Buys

TVWBB Member
I have recently become fairly good friends with a semi-professional barbecue champion. He tours in the summer to all the big cook offs and I had a chance to spend part of the day with him at one near my home. He cooks exclusively on Big Green Eggs and leaves his bottom vent open full bore and adjusts his temp with the top vent. He says he only ever closes down the bottom vents if closing the top doesn't bring the heat down to the level he wants. This seems to be the exact opposite of most of the stuff I've read with the WSM. Is there anything "wrong" with doing this on the Weber or a drawback I'm not aware of?
 
I've never tried done it that way. For the WSM keeping the top full open and the adjusting the bottoms works so well that there might not be a reason to go that way.

On the Egg I've had to adjust both the top and the bottom vents. When I first started cooking on the Egg I tried to adjust temp the WSM way by leaving the top vent wide open. No dice, temps just kept climbing out of the smoking range even with the bottom vent fully closed.

Replacing the gasket on the Egg this week, maybe next week I'll give the Bottom vent wide open a try on the egg.

Brad.
 
some say to control it with the top vent. problem is that it tends to keep the smoke in longer and i feel this can create problems with taste. i choose to control things with the bottom vents and maybe fine tune with the top. but you need to try both ways and see what you like best.
 
something about restricting the flow from the top can create condensation of creosote, which is a bitter tar like stuff that coats the inside of the smoker.

I find that my wsms can be a bit leaky and draw air even with all bottom vents closed. I'll choke down the top to help, and never had problems.

I suspect that the creosote condensation problem would be more common in offsets where the smoke has a longer distance to travel and more opportunity to cool off.

Why one would only adjust the top is weird to me, maybe he doesn't like to bend over
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I always herd the same as Jeff said.

If you wanna get your Car to go slower you dont cover up the exhaust pipe(top went) but you are more easy on the throttle (air,bottom vents)
 
If you shut the top, then you will lose your draw. The smoke would then just build up and sit there. For some reason, that doesn't sound good to me.

Also, my top vent has been stuck wide open for years!
 
I've been trying to BBQ on my One Touch Silver 22" grill, which does not have the fine temperature control as an actual smoker. When trying to get the temps down in a hurry, I'd been shutting down the top vent as well as the one-touch "dampers." For my first couple of cooks, the meat would taste ashy to me.

Only after that did I do some research here and other places, and saw references to never close the top vent, as that would result in a creosote formation. Sounded a little hard to believe. I spent some time trying to find a scientific explanation outside of BBQ internet forums, but didn't find much in the little time I spent on it. About the most likely explanation I found said that when smoke was trapped in the cooker and began to cool, that the good compounds that you desired in your meant would "condense" into other compounds - i.e., soot.

This is what I'm certain of: I quit closing the top vent, and the ashy flavor in the meat went completely away.
 
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