Brisket using chimney starter method

Standing by. 

O h heck yeah.  I'm guessing that you're a convert to the charcoal chimney technique at this point...?

Not to rain on the parade, but the smoke ring has little to do with the smoke intensity.   It's a chemical reaction that you can create with burning stuff with a lower pH.  Thats why briquettes produce a better smoke ring than lump, or cherry over hickory.  It's  also why all the BBQ comp societies stopped judging based off the smoke ring....because it can be artificially manipulated with hay and other stuff that isn't the flavor smoke.

As far as the usage goes, you probably burned more lump because it's so freakin cold out.  BTUs are BTUs, so unless you ran a higher temp, there's no way to get rid of them any faster.  So you either had less to start with, radiated heat off the egg faster due to low temps and wind, or you ran a higher pit temp.

In a low and slow BGE cook, so little of the charcoal is burning at any given time.....the fire moves around.  Don't get hung up too much on the internet lore.  In other faster burning smokers, a lot of this stuff does work, but kamados are completely different animals because they are so well insulated and sealed, thus using very little O2 to maintain temp.

In any case, awesome looking brisket!!!

DainW said:

Man hitting us with the science on this one. All of that makes sense. Are you saying that you don’t really buy into the chimney starter method would really produce a cleaner smoke than just randomly mixing in the wood chunks with the lump because the fire will move around anyway due to the low amount of oxygen needed to maintain temps? I can also see that making sense if so. 

Ideally, we would be able to do the Pepsi challenge with two briskets cooked 

I don't get the whole "clean smoke" argument in a kamado when it comes to low and slow.  It's not gonna happen at that low of a temp.  If takes a very small amount of BTU's to maintain temp.  We have all opened our BGE's after a 20+ hr smoke and seen unburned wood and charcoal because it fire never reached that point.  If you light from the bottom, of the firebox you risk the fire getting away from you because the heat ignites the other charcoal on it's way up.

Ultimately you are metering the O2, so there can only be so much wood or charcoal burning somewhere.  That's why the whole "huge chunks" of charcoal or wood chunk size arguments mean nothing in a <250F kamado.  I run chips in mine, and even the end of a 20hr smoke, some are not burned.  Nothing burns faster or slower without a subsequent temp change.

You could do a side by side, but you forgot the main thing that can throw all of it off every single time......the brisket.  That's the screwiest piece of meat in the cow.  They are never the same.  Pork and chicken are easy to replicate once you have them down, but brisket is what makes or breaks you on the comp circuit.