2nd Smoke (EVER)
 

Today will be my second smoke EVER. My first was on Friday. A small rack of baby back ribs, today a huge beef rack.

I have the Chargriller with the SFB. So far I've done the SFB mkod with the vegetable tray from lowes, although I thoroughly destroyed it trygin to put the orgianl grate as the bottom. As I did extended the smoke stack on the inside and turned the main chamber coal tray upside down. I also thought why not move the internal smoke stack to the opposite side (the side closest to the SFB) to create a reversal flow, will that work?

Without installation I'm still have alot of smoke seeking out, ande I'm sure alot of heat with it. Its very difficult to maintain 250.

Oh, btw the ribs have been on for about 30 minutes and everyone is supposed to show up shortly. The problem with seeing all these mods and tryign them the day of cooking.

Yesterday the ribs were good, but I didn't sauce them in the third phase and I think they coudl have been cooked longer, but they were still good. Especially for the first time.

We'll since I have this COS I better go check the temp, any suggestions on piling the coal, perhaps using my chimney to keep the heat up.

btw the baffle made ouf of the ash tray has seemed to even the temp nicely.

30 minutes and the guests arrive shortly? My ribs usually take about 4-5 hours.

Good luck

I would advise that keeping a chimney handy and dumping some lit coals in is not a bad idea. You could try putting some foil into the smokier gaps on the fly.

well the guests are usually late, and they aren't here still, soo...

almost at the 3 hr mark, trying to do the 'if you're lookin, you're not cookin' idea, even going without spritzing, hard enough maintaining a temp without opening the hood.

i've also noticed its hard to put my hickory chunks to smoke with the fire usually catching them on fire when they are in the sfb.

i've noticed the heated evenly distributed at times, but also noticed sometimes I've switched the hot spot from by the sfb to end that the upside down tray is exposed on.

at the same time, gotta clean the gas gril for the hot dogs and burgers.

maybe I should mock up a smoker with high enough sfb for direct cooking without compromising the smoking

Sounds like you've already done a web search for the CG mods so I won't go over them here. But my first mod was my favorite and you can do it right now...in the main cooking chamber, I put a cookie sheet above the opening of the SFB to dissipate the heat...some. If you angle it correctly, it will help with the hot-spot and it should fit under the grates.

Keep the fire roaring. Don't get behind or it will be hard to catch up. Don't add unlit coals. Like Landarc said, have lit coals ready to go almost every hour to hour and a half.