Who Uses A Backwoods Party????

Are you using water in the pan? If so, try it with an empty pan or a pan filles with crumpled foil. I've had no problem hitting 300 with mine with the pan filled with crumpled foil and then covered with HD foil for easy cleanup.

IamMadMan said:

Ron,
I will try that this weekend and see if that helps regulate the heat.

My other concern with the cooker is that a full load (about 12 lbs) of charcoal I only get a 6.5 - 7 hour burn before I have to reload.

Closing the top vent almost all of the way makes me worry about bitter tasting meat from particle matter.

Without the water pan I can hit 350,
but with the water in the pan I cannot get much over 200.

I did four 8lb pork butts this past weekend and after 16.5 hours I had to put them into a 400 degree oven to finish them.

I was told to close the guru vent on the side and only use the pinwheel vent on the front. I will experiment this weekend and hopefully I will begin to like the new unit again.

Click to expand...

Pinwheel vent on the front? Is that new? I don't remember seeing a Party with a pinwheel vent.

Your burn time sounds about right. You can add a basket to the firebox to allow you to pack in more charcoal and even set up a snake path that could extend the burn time.

IamMadMan said:

I bought a clone from someone who rebuilds Backwoods. I was told it was better and $1000.00 less. This has an adjustable pinwheel vent on the front of the firebox, as well as a side ball valve for a guru.

Click to expand...

That explains my confusion :-D

Unfortunately, unless someone has that same clone any of our advice will only be close, but not great. When I did a couple of high temp cooks on my Party I have both bottom vents wide open and the top open until it got within about 50 degrees of my target temp (325, I think) and then I shut one bottom vent all the way and closed off the other slowly to stabilize temps. I think I had the top vent at about halfway when things were stable, but it's been a while.

I also worry about closing off the top vent of a cooker, but remember that the Backwoods design if a reverse flow. If you clone is the same, the smoke enters the cook chamber at the top and flows down over the food to the exit point near the bottom and then up the chimney. Partially closing the chimney in this design may not have the negative effects that is can with other cookers.

IamMadMan said:

I was going to go to the metal warehouse and make a divider to try and extend the burn.

Click to expand...

There are some pictures both here and searchable through Google that may help. I'm not a fabricator, but I have seen folks mention leaving an air gap between the plates in the divider to prevent the fire from jumping the desired path because of conduction through the metal.

Old Dave said:

Here is another picture of my Party loaded with 4 of the 18 pizzas I cooked at a contest a couple of years ago. They were done with my crumpled foil water pan setup and the top vent wide open at all times. The baking temps were 375-425 degrees.

Click to expand...

Thanks for jumping in, Dave! I go the idea of using crumpled foil in my Party from your posts on the BWS forum and it's worked well for me!