Nevous overnighter

Black_Badger · December 2012

I have an 8# butt ready to go overnight, but I'm a little worried about my setup. I was at the bottom of a bag of lump and dumped it all in when firing it up. That left me with a higher fill than normal, above the first seem. I didn't have room for the pizza stone drop rig, so I put the stone on the grid. I'll be able to put the butt on the raised rack and essentially have a raised indirect with a very full fire box.

My concern comes in the temp control. I'm finding the lower vent needs to be more open than normal to allow enough air in to get the temp to 250. Normally it'd be about the width of a nickel, now it's probably a half inch. I'm worried if it starts breathing better during the night the temp will spike and I'll be in bad shape in the morning.

Anyone ever had something like this come up before? I'm tempted to just run it a little low and deal with it in the morning if the fire ends up going out. I know I can recover from too low temp/fire out, but I'll be toast if it's too high.

Thoughts?

Cheers all -

B_B

U_tarded · December 2012

it can't get that high that it won't just finish fast depending at top you are looking at max what 325 ish? just guessing it could be outside top? I would just get up and check it a few hours early more like the hour per pound rate that the 1.5 to 2.

The Cen-Tex Smoker · December 2012

setup is fine. you also need to consider it's probably much colder (I don't know where you are but it's cold everywhere) and that takes more airflow- so more open vent.

Black_Badger · December 2012

Thanks U-T, Cen Tex. I left it open to breathe a bit more before putting the pork on and it did drift up. It's at about 265 now, but I'm not going to chase temp from there. I'll give it one more look tonight then reassess in the morning. It's mid-40s here in So Cal, so outside temp is not too much of a concern.

Fingers crossed for good looking pork in the AM.

Cheers all -
B_B

The Cen-Tex Smoker · December 2012

Black_Badger said:

Thanks U-T, Cen Tex. I left it open to breathe a bit more before putting the pork on and it did drift up. It's at about 265 now, but I'm not going to chase temp from there. I'll give it one more look tonight then reassess in the morning. It's mid-40s here in So Cal, so outside temp is not too much of a concern.

Fingers crossed for good looking pork in the AM.

Cheers all -
B_B

all good

U_tarded · December 2012

Black_Badger said:

Thanks U-T, Cen Tex. I left it open to breathe a bit more before putting the pork on and it did drift up. It's at about 265 now, but I'm not going to chase temp from there. I'll give it one more look tonight then reassess in the morning. It's mid-40s here in So Cal, so outside temp is not too much of a concern.

Fingers crossed for good looking pork in the AM.

Cheers all -
B_B

Don't know if I helped but the butt is forgiving. enjoy!

Black_Badger · December 2012

Everything looked good this morning. Dome temp had drifted down to about 230, but the egg was still running strong. I opened the bottom vent up a bit and it's back to running about 270 now. Butt is at about 190 so I'm thinking it should be done fairly soon. There's a heck of a fatty layer on this one, which is good because we won't be eating it until tomorrow so I need to help keep it as moist as possible. I'm thinking once I hit 190 I might stoke the egg up to 350 to firm up the bark. I also have chicken wings, moink balls, pig shots, and turtle eggs to do today and I think 350 should be good for those.

Still a fair amount of prep to do today, but I'll check in later with some pics.

Cheers all -
B_B

lousubcap · December 2012

@Black_Badger-one other factor that may have contributed to your larger than normal bottom vent setting was all the dust and fines from the remaining lump reducing your available air flow channels. Just a thought...

And with regard to loading up on lump-you can go all the way to the top of the fire-ring if needed for an extremely long low&slow cook-BGE runs along just fine as long as you can keep the air flow satisfied. FWIW-

Black_Badger · December 2012

Thanks @lousubcap, I had thought about that, but I actually cleaned the egg just before lighting, should have mentioned that. Moink balls and pig shots are on now and look nice. Turtle eggs also on, but I appear to have over stuffed them because they ruptured badly. I'm sure they'll still taste good, but they're not pretty...

Pork turned out great and it's all pulled and ready for action now. Just about to pull the other apps and put the wings on. I'm hoping I have time to get some good smoke on the wings just in case they need to be finished in the oven (since I'm now out of lump.

Here are a couple pics of the adventure:

Cheers -
B_B

lousubcap · December 2012

Now that's a spread...enjoy!

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