overloaded smoker?

[frankhaustin]

I apologize for the length of this post...

I have an old country offset smoker that I've cooked at most two briskets and two or three racks of pork ribs on at one time. The briskets are typically around 10-12 lbs each.

The lower cooking area is about 30''x20'' and there is an upper rack that is about 30"x 13". Normally I put the two briskets on the lower rack and load up the upper rack with pork spare ribs and some times I'll move ribs down to the empty space on the bottom rack.

For a local comp that starts tonight I have two 12lbs briskets, an 8lbs bone in pork butt and three racks of pork spare ribs. My plan again is to fill the top rack with as many 1/2 or 1/3 racks of spare ribs as I can fit, put the two briskets side by side on the bottom rack and also put the pork butt on the bottom rack as well.

This may be a dumb question to those more in-tune with the laws of physics but my question is: I normally allow for about 12 hours to cook my two briskets and also have a 2-4 hours of rest time beffer. Since I am adding another 8lbs of meat to my smoker sitting next to the briskets should I plan for more than 12 hours for the briskets? And or do you think adding that extra meat will make my ribs take longer than the typical 6 or so hours?

Secondly, the head judge is asking teams that have room to smoke extra brisket that they will provide to feed the crowd as part of a fund raiser. I've modified my smoker a bit to allow me to install a third shelf that goes in between the bottom shelf and the top shelf. If I did this there would probably only be one or two inches between a brisket resting on this middle shelf and the ribs above it and the brisket below it on the bottom shelf. Last year I placed 3rd in brisket out of 18 teams and I want to win this year. Do you think it is a bad idea to try and add a third brisket to my back yard smoker? If I do add one do you think it will extend the cooking times for everything else in my smoker?
Thanks, Frank

[PimpSmoke]

Air flow and loss of convection would be the biggest concern for me. I choked down my cooker a bit more than I should have a few weks ago and it cost me in undercooked butts.

[luke duke]

That's a lot of meat for a small pit. Sounds like a good excuse to upgrade.

Or at least find someone that can lend you another pit.

[frankhaustin]

You ain't kidding. I'm on craigslist every day looking at smokers.... but first I'll have to figure out a way to get my wife to stop spending all my money.

The third brisket it out. Maybe I'll try out my new shelves cooking for friends before attempting it in a competition. I had hopped to build a UDS before this event but could not find an unlined drum around town. Thanks again, Frank