WGC Weekend Warrior

Well, I filled the egg up to the top of the fire ring with WGC, just poured it in and spread it out w/ my hands. No special laying out of the lump. Filled the chimney w/ Royal Oak and lit it top and bottom w/ MAPP. Dumped it out when flaming all over and spread it over the WGC. Put the spider in and had to do some shifting around of some chunks so it would fit. Loaded the adjustable rig (small grid on bottom rack, lg grid on top) and pizza stone on top. Let dome get to 250* and sit for 15-20 minutes. Removed rig and shoved the hickory in the lump, stone on spider, rig in place w/ drip pan (w/ cheap beer) on lower grid, meat on top grid (highest rig setting). Dome temp dropped to 150*. Ended up opening lower draft fully, no DFMT. Took almost an hour to get back to 250*. Closed lower to nickel width, DFMT on: slider closed, Daisy open full petal. Temp been dropping ever since. This is almost two hours since putting meat on. I have opened the lower draft all the way and can see the whole grate lit up bright orange. Wiggle rod to each hole: no obstruction. Temp still dropping. Lower draft opened to double nickel width. Ideas to keep temp up to 250*? Hate to keep chasing it, but can't imagine why with the drafts set like this I can't hold temp.

Get your minds out of the gutter. After sitting here nursing my Capt. Morgan and hot cider, I got to thinking that my dome probe might be touching my meat. So I slipped off the DFMT and took a peak w/ a flash light. Just barely touching. Adjusted that little springy thing that comes w/ the probe so that the tip is just about a half inch away from the meat. Dome temp now 275*. Closed the lower draft to nickel width and Daisy a half petal. Hope things settle down, but looks like that WGC will make for a good cook.

I had one more temp drop earlier in the evening (probe not touching meat this time). I opened draft door and removed DFMT. Used the wiggle rod and got fire up again. Reset my drafts and temp went back to 270*. Didn't want to mess with it anymore, so left everything the as it was. Went to bed at 2AM. Brought remote temp to bed to monitor meat temp, since I was sure dome would stay in a reasonable range. At 7AM the meat was 188*. Went downstairs and dome down to 240*. Wiggle rodded again and got dome to 310*. Meat hit 200* (both of them at same time!) at 8:15AM. Total cook time for 15# total weight was 15hr 45min. They are foiled, toweled, and resting in cooler. Bringing them to work in the next few minutes.
Took all my grids and stuff down and took a look at the lump. Burned evenly all around, down about 2 inches from where I filled it. Not much ash. I think a more carefully laid out lump would have kept things even heat w/o having to tend it so much. Also, I think the second temp drop (down to 230* or so) occured as meat started to plateau. Don't know if this contributed to the drop or not. All in all, some good, long burning lump. I'll report back later after tasting it.