What made my temperature go low?


 
J

James Trapp

TVWBB Fan
I was cooking a 8lb brisket yesterday. I put it on at 8 AM with the WSM running a stable 230 for 5 hours. I wanted to add 3 very large racks of spares at 12:30 for a target dinner time of around 6-6:30 PM.

When I added the spares I put two slabs on the lower rack and one on the top rack with the brisket. The brisket had been at 180 degrees for the last hour before I added the spares. I anticipated that it would be done pretty soon.

After I added the ribs I could not get the WSM over 160 when measured at the top grate even with the vents open 100%. The brisket temperature fell to 160 degrees. The coals were still going strong with what appeared to be plenty of fuel left.

I ended up Starting a chimney and a half of coals and added them to get the temps up where they should be. After this the meat on the bottom rack ended up cooking faster than the top rack??????

Has anyone had trouble with this before?

I do not think that adding the meat itself would lower the WSM's temperature so much. My amateur theory is that the large ribs on the bottom rack prevented the airflow/heat from reaching the top of the cooker.

Everything ended up OK with dinner time being pushed back only an hour but I have never experienced this problem before.
 
The added mass of cold meat absorbed all of the heat. It is like having a large 4 quart pot of boiling water and adding 2 quarts of cold water. The water in pot will immediately drop in temperature and you can either leave the heat the same or if you want to bring the temp up quicker you will need additional heat.
 
Joe's explanation makes sense. My experience is that nothing you put on the lower rack can keep the heat from making it to the top.
 
How long did you wait before adding more coals? It can take quite a while for the cold meat to stop impacting the temperature. You need to wait at least an hour before panicking.
 
About an hour. Do I need to wait longer to see a change?

This was the first time I ever added meat to the bottom rack as in the past if I used the bottom rack the meat went on at th beginning.
 
Possibly. It's relative though. It depends on cooker temp, the mass of meat you already have on and its temp, and the mass of the meat you are adding and how cold (or not) it is.

Be prepared for it. Nothing wrong with adding more fuel. You just didn't need to add so much, the cooker only requiring a bit of a heat push to get it over the hump, not really much more.
 
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