problem maintaining smoke

td66snrf said:

IMHO I feel you get plenty of smoke from the lump. Usually people don't complain about not enough smoke but too much. 

I think it depends on what you're cooking, and what your own personal taste is.  When I cook chicken, I like a little smokiness, a hint of a sort of outdoors, campfire flavor, but I don't want much!  I hardly ever add wood if I'm cooking chicken, especially something like a plain spatchcocked bird with just salt and pepper and a little oil.  I would complain if that kind of chicken were way smoky.

But I like REALLY smoky ribs!  I've never in my life had ribs that were too smoky for me!  I like smoky brisket.  Pork butt never is super smoky because there's so much less surface area compared to interior, but I like some smoke flavor, so I get that outside bark about as smoky as I can.  I worked hard to figure out how to get MORE smoke in my BGE cooks, and I'm very happy as a result.

And grilling hot and fast, the few times I've thrown in some wood chips I've never been sure I could really tell much difference -- there just isn't a lot of time to lay down smoke flavor.  It's mostly the flavor of the meat plus the flavor of the sear, so I hardly ever use any wood chips when grilling.

And I agree with @minniemoh, Rockwood is less smoky than BGE lump, which is all I used for years, before.  I still am fine with BGE/RO lump, because the smokiness isn't too much for me even on a plain bird, but sure, I've gathered that some people really don't like practically ANY smoke flavor, and Rockwood would be better for them, for sure.  I'm never sure how different grilled food is from food broiled in the oven if there's no smoke flavor at all, but that's me.  Some people love smoke-less grilled food -- I don't get it, but to each his/her own.