First cook: new to me offset (ride along)

el_matt said:

Here's a mod you don't hear about very often. Remove the chimney, and weld the gap between the flange and the chimney, closed. It really helped level out temps in my NBBD. I had originally used JB Weld, but it eventually failed.

Looking forward to how your brisket turns out.

Matt

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I think I saw that somewhere. There is a bolt on the back of the chamber by the chimney. Is it bolted in? If so I may remove it and fit something between the chimney and the opening. I used high temperature silicone on my WSM for a better seal and that might work well here.

ButtBurner said:

a bezel?

Hank, how is the cook going?

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I'm happy with the results so far but I have much to learn. I opened the cooker to put a probe (ET-73) in the brisket and it is at 181° and inching up. It is coloring up nicely. I'm using my ET-732 to get the temperature on either end of the grate and the end toward the fire box is running about 40° hotter. Right now it's 288° vs. 250°. When I added the ET-73 I put the cooker probe next to the brisket in about the middle. It's running about where the hot end is or even a few degrees hotter. It's probably close to the 2" gap between my "tuning plates."

I'm surprised by how often I need to add wood. It seems like there is a relatively small bed of coals and fresh wood joins it rather rapidly, particularly the box elder. Both are pretty dry. As a result I need to add a couple sticks about every 20 minutes. I'm wondering if larger pieces of wood would provide a longer burn w/out spiking the temperature. It looks like I'll consume all of the wood I prepared before the brisket is finished so I'll try splitting some more pieces a little larger. <need to run out and tend the fire> I seem to be getting relatively clean smoke. I get a little white when adding wood and most of the time it is barely visible.

Woops! Preheating some sticks in the firebox has it's risks. It can catch fire and spike the temperature. :twitch:

Edit: I do have temps at three points across the grate so I can see what the baffles are doing. In the picture I showed one up against the other but I thought about it some more and opened about a 2" gap to allow some heat to come up after the angled baffle.

tx_hellraiser said:

are you saying that you have about a few degress temp difference across the grates ?

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It seems to be running 20-40° from one end to the other. the middle is reading a little higher. Right now from left to right (hot to cold) firebox to stack I have 244°, 283°, 268°. When I add fuel it pushes the hot end up and as it drops, the temperatures get closer.

ButtBurner said:

sounds like you are doing fine.

maybe just bigger sticks for a longer interval between adding them is all you need

are you supplementing with charcoal?

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I'm trying bigger sticks now. They don't light as easy so I've added some smaller sticks as well. I'm not using any charcoal beyond what I used to get the fire going. For this cook I'm determined to stick with sticks but I'll keep charcoal as a future option.

Like Bill said near the end of the movie, "You didn't think it was gonna be that easy, did you?" I expect a learning curve and don't expect everything to be perfect on my very first cook. I'll be happy if I get some decent 'Q out of this and hope to learn something from the effort that makes things easier/better on the next go 'round.