WSM Use in hot climates?


 
J

JoeMarcum

TVWBB Member
Folks,

I live in Texas, which during the summers can get above 100 degrees outside.

Any impact on slow and low smoking with either the 14.5 or 18.5 WSM? I have a weber gas and even with just one burner on low, with that outside temps, it can impact the lowest temps i can get to.
 
Yup! Cook in the shade. This past summer we had close to 40C and you probably could have cold smoked with no charcoal the thing got so hot!
 
For me, it's not the outside temp that affects my 18.5" although it does take a little longer to come up to cooking temp in cold weather. I offset that by taking a little longer to assemble my WSM after starting my charcoal, Minion method.

What affects my cooks is humidity. The higher the humidity, the more open I have to have my bottom vents. I try to keep my cooks at 250 degrees, and when it's humid, my bottom vents are probably open 1/4" for all but maybe the last hour of a cook (assuming 6 hours minimum) When the Barometer is high ( > 30.5 ) my vents are open maybe 1/16" and sometime I have to close one or more all the way
 
My backyard is in direct sun during most of the day. If I am smoking, I have an umbrella that I put up to shade the smoker. And the WSM too. ;)
 
What THoey said.

I have the same problem here on the space coast. I couldn't get the WSM into the "smoke" zone. Even when I removed the cover, the lid thermometer was reading over 150 degrees.

As it turned out, the umbrella helped a great deal. More so, seasoning the WSM helped tremendously with temp control.

I went through the trouble of doing several test burns with the WSM, just to see what the temp variation was between the lid thermometer and the Maverick, and how much direct sunlight affected the cooking temp. In direct sunlight, the temp would rise 20-50 degrees. When a cloud passed over, if the time was long enough, the temp would drop 20-50 degrees. If it's a particularly cloudy day, with clouds continually passing in front of the sun, the temp is all over the place. So, I rely on instinct, and the data I collected during the test burns.

I stopped stressing over it for some time now. Having gotten used to the weather patterns here, I made the adjustments to my grilling/low 'n slow m.o. as well.
 
I live in north Texas and while we definitely don't have the humidity of Houston it gets as hot if not hotter in temp. It does have an effect and I do have to fight to keep low temps sometimes but generally I can run 225 to 250 no problem. If you are trying to do temps lower than that you will probably have issues. I have gotten significant improvement in the lower temp range by adding the cajun bandit door and adding a gasket kit.
 
When I first started smoking, I used to fight to get that magic 225*. Then I learned that I can produce just as good of meat, faster and cleaner, if I let my pit run at 275* like it likes to run.

If you really need to do low and slow, like for cheese, try using the snake method in your WSM.
 
I'm in the same boat as ChuckO. Humidity is the enemy!
I also have to open the lower vents more than a few weeks ago, where the vents were barely cracked.
What I have found, is that closing any of the lower vents completely gives me an uneven burn on the briquettes. I always have all three lower vents open to some degree, to feed all the fuel.
 
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