SmokinPaPa
Knows what a fatty is.
I have just a quick question. Anyone with a Lang Patio or simular smoker? Do you use all wood or a combination of charcoal and wood. Where I live fruitwood or hardwood is hard to come by.
It is always best to use the fuel that your cooker was designed for. A Lang RF cooker is a "stick burner" and wood is the fuel to use, charcoal is designed to burn slowly with very little air flow, for a cooker designed for that fuel such as a WSM, UDS, Egg, etc. unless you're using it to grill with. An offset cooker requires good draft and if you choke way down on the intake damper to get a slower burn from charcoal, you'll struggle to get the temps up and also get dirty smoke from any wood that is present because it will smolder instead of burn! If you open the pit up and allow the airflow that it needs, the charcoal will all ignite too quickly and you'll get wildly fluctuating and soaring temps until they suddenly crash as the charcoal burns up!Must to the chagrin of traditional stick burners, I use a combo of both. I use a loaded charcoal basket(18 to 20 lbs) with 4" to 6" chucks of wood (minion method) to get long burn times with good results and less tending (insulated firebox). I use a traditional stick burner not a reverse flow.
You have a nice pit! :-D It looks like you have a HUMONGOUS firebox! If that's all firebox back there then I'd imagine that it's pretty easy to get a draft through your pit, whereas with a Lang RF the firebox is much smaller in proportion to the size of the cooker and being reverse flow the heat and smoke must travel to one side of the pit and then back again to find the exit, requiring a really good draft.I appreciate the difference in opinion Oldbill. I also understand the tradition of using a stick burner as a stick burner, but I can get nice clean blue from the method described above. As well as a nice smoke ring! And he was asking about alternate methods :wink:
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You have a nice pit! :-D It looks like you have a HUMONGOUS firebox! If that's all firebox back there then I'd imagine that it's pretty easy to get a draft through your pit, whereas with a Lang RF the firebox is much smaller in proportion to the size of the cooker and being reverse flow the heat and smoke must travel to one side of the pit and then back again to find the exit, requiring a really good draft.
It's a free country and everyone is entitled to use what ever method that they wish but stick burners in general need wood and maybe not all but most of the folks who are experimenting with the different fuels and combinations of them will eventually go back to wood as the primary fuel source.
Cool! :-D That's what's great about this forum, different methods and ideas that are shared here help us all to be better cooks and pit masters! I personally have over 30 years of experience with our kind of cooking and with all of us combined I'd imagine that there's thousands of years of experience to draw from!Thanks, 24" x 24" .375 pipe encased within 2" high heat insulation, encased in a steel 10 gauge square box and 5" stack so yes it is easy to draft. I agree stick burnning makes a great fire, smoke, and product, and it that is what they were designed for. I have had some success other wise and wanted to share with SmokinPaPa.
I run wood in my reverse flow smoker. It isn't easy to come by in South Florida but there are a few companies that do sell firewood.
I always start with a good bed of charcoal and switch over to woodsplits.