White smoke during cook when opening lid

[DanW]

Hi everyone I have about 4 cooks under my belt on my 18.5 WSM and I have noticed a strange occurrence during each cook. I will be cooking along with nice thin blue smoke say 3 hours into some ribs and when I open the lid to pull my ribs to wrap in foil I almost immediately start getting nasty white smoke again. Even if I just open the lid pull the ribs and replace the lid, the extra air the WSM gets for this 20 to 30 seconds makes this happen every time soo far and takes about 5 min or so to get back to blue smoke. I am using Kingsford Comp which I am not too fond of due to heavy ash production compared to Stubbs which I normally use in my kettle and will soon try Stubbs in my WSM next.

Has anyone else noticed this before? My WSM is also a craigslist find which I cleaned up to look like new again but it's an older 2006 model and the door is bit loose fitting. Keeping all the bottom vents pretty much closed and the top wide open I get a grate temp of around 260 to 270 using the minion method with the Kingsford Comp. If the wind comes up I get about 270-290 at the grate unless I block it.

Thanks!

Dan

 

[Enrico Brandizzi]

You are focusing over briquettes.....

I'm thinking about wood chips or chunks. To me I have moved to chunks and splits in last months and when I pull off the lid in my WSM the wood immediately catch the fire and start smoking with white billowing smoke.
This is my experience.

 

[DanW]

I use very little wood, for ribs I only use one baseball sized chunk of apple for the whole cook. After 3 hours I would imagine it would pretty much be burned up since I put it on with my lit coals at the start. I am just thinking maybe the Kingsford Comp with its whole faster hotter cooking characteristics tends to spark up when air is introduced.

 

[Charles H.]

A little white smoke that happens a few times in the cook isn't going to hurt anything.
Tightening up the cooker so the temperature can be controlled is something that might be worth doing something about.

 

[DanW]

I am going to look into getting a replacement door. This seems to be the area of them most unwanted air entry. Thanks!

 

[Charles H.]

Depending on how inexpensive you want to keep things, you could try fixing the door with high temp automotive gasket RTV.
Clean around the door opening on the WSM.
Clean the inside perimeter of the door real good about an inch wide.
Apply a nice bead of the RTV to the door about 1/2" from the edge.
If you are brave spray the outside of the WSM body around the door opening real good with PAM and install the door.
Let the RTV cure, should be air tight.
If not brave, spray plastic wrap with PAM and put the sprayed side onto the RTV, try to minimize wrinkles, install the door and let the RTV cure, should be almost air tight.
Plastic wrap should peel right off.
Trim squeeze out off the edge of the door.

 

[Carl H.]

This is normal when you give the fire a big gulp of air by lifting the lid. It quickly settles down soon after you replace it. No big deal.