Wood or Charcoal

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.

Smokin' Greene said:

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.

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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!
Wood burns hotter than charcoal and as long as it combusts it will give you plenty of heat as well as a thin blue smoke. So start your fire with a chimney of lit lump and a couple of splits, when the pit gets up to temp add a split every 45 min. or so to maintain it. From this point forward you are burning ONLY wood, your intake damper is anywhere from 1/3 to 3/4 open (depending on desired temp) and your exhaust is wide open.
You'll find that an all wood fire is MUCH easier to control in an offset than charcoal as the cooker is wide open, drafting well, delivering good heat and clean smoke to your food.
You shouldn't put gasoline in a diesel engine and likewise you shouldn't put charcoal in a stick burner!:wink:

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 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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I always start with a good bed of charcoal and switch over to woodsplits.

Been cooking on the lang for a year now and never had anything but hickory and pecan in it.

Smokin' Greene said:

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.

oldbill said:

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.

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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.

Smokin' Greene said:

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.

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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!
We're all pretty lucky to be living in the computer age (especially the new comers), heck when I started cooking there was no such thing as a "world wide web" let alone a forum to learn from! LOL! Thanks for your posts!

http://www.fruitawoodchunks.com/

Not cheap, but they do have some good wood. Who knows, they may be close to you.

No, thank you Oldbill for being willing to come into the computer age and share your knowledge. :clap::grin:

Sometimes we run all splits and sometimes we run charcoal with wood.

For those long cooks when we want to get some sleep we run a few hours with splits and which we burn in our charcoal basket. Later, we shift to charcoal so we can get some sleep.

We bought our basket from Jeff at XXL Baskets. here is the link. http://yokeup.net/XXLBaskets.html

We find that when the meat is wrapped in foil it doesn't make a difference if we burn all wood or charcoal.

Drake said:

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.

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I sell firewood to almost every restaurant in South Florida but mostly only oak and Aussie pine is all we can get price wise this far south.

Deep South said:

I always start with a good bed of charcoal and switch over to woodsplits.

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^ I too always start out with a good bed of charcoal and switch over to wood for the cook :thumb:. It takes a little longer to establish a good bed of coals using just wood to start the fire, but the end result is the same to me

I was using all wood in my lang, even to start it.But its been a brutal winter here and seasoned wood is scarce now. Yesterday I made as big of a basket that would fit, filled it with ro lump not charcoal.Threw in a few chunks of wood and wow! I loved it.It ran for several hours steady 250. Added a peice of wood after about 3/4 hrs,kept it going.clean smoke from start.The weather was calm and 75 outside.So now there is 16 bags ro lump in my garage.But I was okay with all wood,just more tending.