Thin Blue smoke?

Thin blue smoke indicates a clean burning fire, in other words, less chance of creosote.

I always wait till my fire is burning correctly before I add anything to my smoker.


Lets see how I did...

Right on... Billowing white or greyish blue smoke will leave a foul flavor on the food and a numbing sensation in your mouth. Creosote.

Little almost invisible smoke produces the prettiest and tastiest q. Clean fresh taste and you can still taste the meat.

flame is a good sign you got a clean burn. My offset and stick burner I make sure I can see a flame. Its worth waiting an additional thirty minutes to burn off the nasties and get the fire right.

Also don't go throwing fuel to the fire every hour or two. add more air to get temps up not more fuel. Preheat your sticks and chunks on your fire box. And avoid soaking your chunks. stay ahead of your fire so you don't have to close your intake to control temps. Snuffing a fire out causes bad smoke

Smoke is actually a blend of invisible gasses and suspended solids, when a fire is burning at low temperatures, it is not achieving complete combustion, thus the elements of the wood that can be burned are not fully incinerated. One of the compounds is creosote, there are other elements that can also exhibit bitter or grainy attributes to meat, or any other thing you might be cooking. Avoiding these elements is key to good taste.

Yeah... what they said !!!

I see the professionals have handled this with their usual aplomb.

Class dismissed.

A pic is worth a thousand words......

Not an expert on the subject but I believe the blue smoke happens when the Parkay Bottles falls into the fire.

Bbq Bubba said:

A pic is worth a thousand words......

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Thank you. That was perfect.

Butcher BBQ said:

Not an expert on the subject but I believe the blue smoke happens when the Parkay Bottles falls into the fire.

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Is that working for you guys?

If you have white smoke, you are liable to get a bitter tasting product at the end of a long cook. With a light, almost invisible, blue smoke you are much more likely to get some BBQ goodness.

It's takes some practice, but there are really only two elements to managing a fire. Fuel, and air. From there you can go to selecting and blending woods for the smoke flavor you want.

Tell this group what kind of cooker you have, or want to buy, and I suspect you'll get more than enough input to completely answer the question!:becky:

well..what kind of smoke comes out of a pellet pooper?

blue smoke

I am in the process of gathering stuff and building my first uds. Will the uds smoke be thin blue or white due to drippings falling on coals??

Bbq Bubba said:

A pic is worth a thousand words......

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Too see this picture in an old post is actually the reason I found this forum and the reason I joined.

Once they got me through the door, I stayed.

I have an offset stick burner. Here's what I do:

I use a chimney of charcoal to get about 4 -5 sticks going and let that burn down for about 2 hours. I preheat 3 sticks near the firebox at this time, not on the firebox because the fire is roaring and the box will ignite the sticks that are placed on it. Once the firebox is at the normal temp then I'll place them on the box. I'll also place the next piece to be used in the firebox away from the fire..............instant ignition when you place it on the fire. So, I rotae the sticks from the top of the firebox to the inside of the firebox and finally into the fire.

I always have a fairly lively fire, never smouldering. Another key is that I resplit a standard sized firewood split. If you have a huge pit then you can probably use the whole split. I leave both, the intake and exhaust dampers fully open and adjust my temp with the wood that I add.

I know some people have said that they used a BBQ Guru or Stoker with a wood only fire with good results. I have thought about it, but don't want to spend the money to experiment. I can see a situation where the gizmo is trying to lower the temperature and you end up with an Oxygen starved fire.............excess smoke and creosote.

Good luck!

jeffboyette said:

flame is a good sign you got a clean burn. My offset and stick burner I make sure I can see a flame. Its worth waiting an additional thirty minutes to burn off the nasties and get the fire right.

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When you say flame, Do you mean on the wood chunks/chips or the charcoal? I have very difficult times with TBS using chips if i just spread them over the hot coals with out some sort of smoker box to hold the chips.

thanx

Dave Russell said:

Notice the stickburners were the ones that jumped on your queastion.

That's because you don't need to be worried about keeping your fire burning clean if you're using a charcoal smoker with an oxygen-deprived environment, like my weber smoky mt. Wood and charcoal in it smolders with NO FLAME, whereas you're gonna have a fire in the offset, either a clean burning one, or a dirty one, as evidenced by the smoke.

With my wsm, I just wait till the smoke cleans up after fueling with charcoal before I put the meat on. I've yet to have nasty tasting meat like I did with my old offset when I didn't have a clue what I was doing.

Burning a clean fire with the offsets though, is not only essential for decent barbecue, it's also a little tricky, especially with the smaller ones.

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Does this mean that with a BGE or Primo, it's okay to have a whitish smoke? I will be smoking some chickens tomorrow and when I put the chips on they typically give a lot of white/grey smoke.... is this bad? Once the chips run out I can barely see anything coming out of the top

(In fact, yesterday was my first smoke, and when I got up in the morning I was sure that my fire had gone out, but it was still chugging at 250 I just couldn't see any exhaust)

Dave Russell said:

With my wsm, I just wait till the smoke cleans up after fueling with charcoal before I put the meat on. I've yet to have nasty tasting meat like I did with my old offset when I didn't have a clue what I was doing.

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How long do you wait if you are using the minion method? I have always worried that the unlit fuel would ignite and I would just end up with a full chamber of lit fuel. So, I have always put the meat on when white smoke is still billowing out.