Did my first stick burn this weekend
I borrowed an Old Country Pecos to try my hand at cooking on a stick burner. I cooked up a little bone-in pork loin roast (about 4 bones long) using hickory.
It was an interesting learning experience. A few things I learned: 1. Airflow is king. Yeah we should all know this, but if you're working on a cheap-ish offset, you have to worry about how well each stick can breathe. Just laying sticks in the firebox is a bad idea, better if you can put the stick over a heat source with some airflow underneath, meaning laying against the side of the firebox or something. Once I got the first couple sticks going, I'd add a new one by leaning one edge on a lit stick so it was propped up at an angle. 2. If you wait until the temp drops 50 degrees, you might have a hard time getting the next stick going. There was one point where I thought I was going to have to re-light the fire, but it ended up being ok. 3. Charcoal briquettes are a terrible starter. They're the wrong shape and if you lay a stick on a bed of ashed-over charcoal, the stick can't breathe well enough. Wood chunks on the other hand are a fantastic starter and can be lit in a chimney just like charcoal. I had some old pecan chunks I'm not using to cook with, they worked great. A half chimney of flaming wood chunks will get a log lit in no time and they do a great job of getting the cooker heated up. I have a question about temp control. To keep a clean fire burning, I ended up leaving the firebox door open and the smoke stack wide open. Obviously that leads to fairly big temp swings--when a new stick goes in it spikes up, then slowly comes back down as the stick burns down. Food cooked ok and I was ok with the swings, but is there a way to make it more stable? I decided I didn't want to futz with air control for risk of making a dirty fire, since even with things wide open I sometimes wasn't quite getting TBS. Any tips? |
For more stability, use smaller splits more frequently.
And welocme to the ranks! :wink: |
Yup smaller splits - target temp +\- 25*
275* target add a split at 250* climbs to 290/295 * then slowly drops to 250* You cook in a temp range. I start mine with Briquetts. You will white smoke a lil each time you add a split |
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Yes the fire was up on a grate.
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One tip, which you may or may not be doing is keeping the door open until the wood you just put on catches on fire and get some nice flames going.
Or maybe the wood was just stubborn. Sometimes, I have a stubborn piece or 2 during a cook and just need to flip the log a time or 2 to prod things along... |
Welcome! The guys have you covered with advice. Your next cook should be flawless.
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One of the biggest things I've noticed recently is how much faster a new split lights when it's been warmed. I sit my next 4 splits on the smoker to let them get nice and warm before tossing them in. If I toss in a cold split, then I sit there, like peeps mentioned, with the firebox door open until I see the fire start on the new split before I close the door.
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Yeah, I kept the firebox door open the whole time. I'm thinking maybe the whole smoker wasn't quite drafting enough--if I'd close the door, even with the damper all the way open, I'd get some whiter smoke even if the current sticks had been burning a while and I had TBS. It's like if the door was closed it couldn't breathe enough. I thought about turning the whole smoker around--the wind was blowing straight at the chimney end, meaning the firebox was down wind. I figured a little extra stoking power from the wind wouldn't have hurt at that point.
I'll be doing another cook this weekend, I'm borrowing this one because my next smoker is going to be a serious (read: $$$) smoker and I want to be sure of the type before I spend the money. I know my way around charcoal cookers, so I'm trying my hand at stick burning. The other contender is a pellet pooper (Yoder YS1500). |
try raising the fire grate if you did not
and always add the hottest splits possible |
On my new build I run the door slightly open like 1/8 inch. Always preheat splits and they ignite almost immediately.
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Raise the Fire grate and add more intakes.. was the FB door on the top of the firebox? if you kept it open you probly were losing heat..
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Stickburner is going to swing in temps.. you have to learn your smoker... once you get it down.. you know right around when to add a log.. or adjust your logs to allow optimum burn..
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