ALTI2DE said:

This is totally different than anything I see online.  According to everything I see, the bottom should be open about 1/8-1/4" and the daisy wheel just cracked to get to 275° ish.

What am I missing??? 

You asked above, "What am I missing?". Well, let's take a look at the problem at hand my friend. It sounds to me like you are trying to emulate vent settings to control temp based on what you have read and seen. When it comes to fire management, this simply will not work across the board. While the vent settings and temps you quoted above are certainly in the ballpark if you catch the fire on the way up, there are many other factors to consider that can and most definitely will alter the vent settings. Let me attempt to explain this. Volume of lit fuel in relation to cook chamber size will determine vent settings for a target temp more so than anything else. What this basically means is if you have (these figures are for example only) 5 pounds of lump actually lit and burning, the vent settings will be much different than if you have 1 pound of lump lit burning when trying to hold a set temp. The more volume of initial fuel that you have burning, the more you have to close the vents to hold down the temp. If I read the above correctly, your target temp was 275 degrees. You say that you lit 3 areas of lump. I'm going to go out on a limb here and say you had a little to much lump lit for the given vent settings. It makes holding sub 300 degree temps a real problem when you have a large lit mass of coal. Not impossible, just much harder. It doesn't take much at all to hold the egg at 275. For sub 300 degree cooks, I find it much better and easier to control if you light one spot only. For a sub 300 degree cook, I will light one small spot, usually right in the center. Let this burn and slowly come up to temp. For real long low and slow cooks, I will give the egg a hour, give or take a little, to settle and lock in on temp. If you get a large mass of lump lit it makes controlling the temp a real pain. Especially when trying to hold low temps. Good fire management and vent control is something that will come with time. The more you do it, the better you will get at it. In time it will become instinctive or second nature to you. Sure, the point can be made that if you restrict the air enough (close the vents) that you can choke down any amount of burning fuel to any given temp in the cooking spectrum. But it becomes considerably harder.  Again, just going by where you say that you had the vents set and temp was still to high, my gut feeling is either you had far to much lump burning for the vent settings that you were attempting to use, or you have a pretty good air leak somewhere. I rule out the air leak though because you said  that when you closed the vents all the way down the egg extinguished the lump rapidly. Try my suggestion of lighting one spot only in the center for you next low temp cook. I think it will help solve your issue. And to clarify, it's not really how many spots that you light as it is the total amount of burning lump. 5 very small spots of lit lump can actually be less lit lump than 1 large area of lit lump. Again, if you have a real large mass of lump lit, the 1/8 & 1/4 inch vent settings that you see folks post simply will not work to hold the same temp that they achieved with a much smaller amount of lit lump. It's a simple matter of heat output for a given mass that you are trying to control by restricting and/or increasing draft. The bigger the mass, the longer it takes to drop its BTU output. Not its actual temp, but the volume of heat that it's omitting. On a large mass, it's heat output will increase rapidly with a increase in draft. On the other hand, it's heat output don't respond quite as fast to a reduced draft. Sure the actual temp of the burning fuel will respond pretty quick, but not total heat output. It takes a set amount of time for the heat output to drop sufficiently. Here is a simple test that you or anyone reading this can perform if you doubt what I have said above. Place 10 pounds of lump in your egg and get it all going. Now choke the vent down to a 1/4 and note the temp. It will hold in the 400 degree arena. Now repeat the test with 1 pound of lump and choke the vent down to the same 1/4 and note the temp. The temp will be sub 300. No question of it. At any rate my friend, I hope that the above helps a little. I briefly touched on a few points. Maybe others can offer more. Good luck in the future and may the Brisket Gods smile down upon you and keep you forever in their good grace.