cmwr
is Blowin Smoke!
- Joined
- Sep 17, 2012
- Location
- Villisca Iowa
I tried my first weber lid UDS yesterday. It was a stubby. 55 gallon drum cut down to 21” tall. Charcoal basket is 16”x7 and sits 1.5” high off floor (I burn lump only so ash is not a big concern) I use a diffuser which is thin steel with 4 legs and it sits over my basket an inch or so. The basket hangs out of two sides of my square diffuser about 2” each side. Temps in center of drum yesterday were within 5 degrees apart. Running 2 slider intakes with huge cfm flow. And Weber lid using stock daisy wheel. Yesterday I used the rest of a bag of B&B lump. Mostly small pieces and a few leftover pieces from previous burns. Basket was approximately 1/2 full. I got a chimney red and dumped them in with some cherry chunks. I let it get going for 5 minutes then loaded the top rack with chicken drummettes. I got fire settled in and held 275 or so for 1.5 hours and removed chicken. I continued to experiment with temps and intake openings before closing her down completely shortly after the game started at 2. All in all I dumped chimney in the basket at around 1130. We ate around 110. And I experimented for maybe another hour running out and looking at temps vs intake openings. So 2.5 hours? Let’s just give it the benefit of the doubt and say 3 for the hell of it. I did check it an hour after closing her up and she had dropped from 275 to around 100-125 so it appears as if she was cooling off fast. I came home today to bring it in the garage for touch up paint and when I emptied it out I cannot believe there was hardly any charcoal left in the basket. This is like nothing I have seen on a drum before. My old stubby with a good sealing flat lid and 2” bung hole exhaust, a slightly smaller square vs round fire basket and this same diffuser, same intakes would run forever on very little lump. Any ideas? I am spontaneous but I am really thinking of going back to what I know and that’s flat lids with a good seal. Can anyone chime in? This sucks and is completely unacceptable.