Unfathomable Bastid
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- Sep 23, 2010
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Thanks a ton, Southern. I was thinking the same but since I'm the newb on the block, I thought I'd ask rather assume anything. I did my "test burn" last night and held 225 perfectly (measured by a side gauge at cooking rack level) for several hours. But that's without FOOD. We'll see what it does with a 10lb brisket I have planned for this weekend. I'm thinking about punching a hole in the lid for a second thermometer. I'm assuming this will show me roughly 50 degrees cooler temps. Thoughts?I think you should be fine. The closer you get to your fire, the hotter your cooking surface obviously but you should be able to control your temps sufficiently to account for that. It's been my experience that there's about a 50 degree temperature gradient for every 3"-4" distance from the fire. I have two grates on my drums. The bottom is between 23" and 24" from the bottom of the fire basket. The grate above it is 4" above and consistently runs 50 degrees cooler than the bottom grate.
I'd think that dropping your cooking grate to just 22" would only mean that you'd need to dampen your fire down a little more.
-Bastid