Charcoal placement and burn time ???

Trout Bum

How do you all place your charcoal in the egg and how much do you use ? How long does it burn ? When you do a 16 to 20 hour Boston Butt
pork roast do you have to add coals in the middle of the cooking process or does your initial pile of charcoal burn for the whole 16 to 20 hours. I did a small beef rib eye roast last night for 4 hrs at 300 degrees and noticed that when it was done the charcoal was almost all the way burned up so now I am wondering how I will make the coals last 16 to 20 hrs when i want to a bigger Boston Butt pork roast.
Thanks in advance for your replys...

WessB

Big Daddy,
I personally just dump new lump in, either out of the bag or a pan I use just for adding lump. You want to stir out any old ash before adding new lump, and fill it to the top of the firebox. Your observation at 300° is a little different than cooking a butt at 250°, when I cook a butt I usualy do 2 of them since your gonna be smokin all night anyway why not......my point being I will cook anywhere from 10 to 16 pounds at a time and have easily gone 23 hours with lump still left. You will want to insure that your thermometer is calibrated so you are actually cooking at the temp you want, have a good stabilized temp in the egg and your good to go. I like to poke up through the holes in the charcoal grate before going to bed just to knock down some of the ash..another thing, used lump tends to burn faster than new lump, not saying you need to remove the old stuff, just that if you have 3/4 of a load of used and 1/4 new, it wont burn as long as 3/4 new and 1/4 used....HTH[p]Wess
[ul][li]WessB`s[/ul]

Unknown

Big Daddy,
To add to what Wess said... different lumps can burn longer than others... For instance I normally use Cowboy Lump b/c it is in all the stores where I live... I have recently tried the Wicekd Good Charcoal (Purchased on-line). In comparison the Wicked Good stuffs burns forever compared to the Cowboy... [p]AND...Usually for an overnight cook I will fill the lump up past the fire box about 1/2 way up the fire ring. I find that even doing so with Cowboy lump I will get about 18 hours of cook time @ 225-250.... the same amount of Wicked good ... well I don't really know how long it will last b/c my butt's have always been done in one load with some lump leftover...[p]Check out the Naked Whiz's Webpage and charcoal database for other tyopes that may be local to you or buy online! [p]Cheers, [p]Brian
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