Thursday, I burned it in for a few hours with a full fire basket of Kingsford Pro one layer deep and a half full water pan. I played with the vents and was able to really see how this cooker works. I am NOT running a PID of any kind because I wanted to get to know her a bit before I put her on autopilot. I had no problem finding a vent combination that got the top rack and bottom rack within 25º of each other and locked totally usable temps for hours (254 on top, 231 on the bottom and around 245 on the Tel-True).
It seemed a shame to have this perfect cooking environment and not cook anything, so after a few hours I threw in a chuck roast and breakfast fatty just for fun. I also threw about three chunks of wood in the fire basket. After closing it all back up, it recovered within 20 minutes and chugged along with very little tending into the night. The chuckie became burnt ends and the fatty became... breakfast. That day, I got approximately 11.5 hours of solid cook temps on approximately 9-10lbs of fuel.
Emboldened by this experience, I though I'd attempt an un-attended overnight cook just for fun. I fired it up around 11:30pm, put a butt on around 1am and went to bed. I used the other half of the same Kingsford Pro bag so roughly the same amount of fuel but with a few more wood chunks. This time, I left the firebox door open for a bit while I was coming up to temp. This technique definitely ramps your fire quickly, but I feel like it grew too hot too fast and burned a lot of coal. When I went to bed, the temp was sitting at 234º. When I woke up and opened the iGrill app to look at what happened overnight, the temperature had slowly risen to 272º and slowly fell to 245 over the course of 7 hours. There were only a handful of black coals left, so I dumped in some Frontier lump I had lying around (just the bottom of a bag, maybe 2-3 lbs). I thought I had done myself a favor by choosing a smaller butt for this experiment, but that pesky sucker didn't stall until 180º and even after wrapping took 5 more hours to cook. If I had started a bit earlier and given it more attention before going to bed, I probably could have locked in a temp better. The pork was delicious so whatevs.
At this point, it's a little ridiculous that I hadn't yet cooked ribs since ribs are kinda my thing, so yesterday I rectified that. This time I used only Frontier lump. I made a pile that really only covered the right side of fire chamber. Maybe 4-5 lbs since I was only doing a short cook and 6 chunks of apple and cherry. I put lit coals next to the ball valve and aimed a BBQ Dragon fan set as low as it will go into the valve from the outside. The temp ramped up quickly and I was at 195 in 30 min. I killed the fan and let it slowly rise to 235 by closing up the vents little by little. I put two racks of StL ribs on and sat with the cooker for about an hour to find the sweet spot. Then I went in to do some work and let the BB just do it's thing. Three hours later the temp had gone up to 240 very gently. I spritzed with apple juice and noticed the color was already getting good. I closed it up and let it go for another hour. When I checked again I had some boneshine and should have sauced then but I let it go a little while longer mostly because we weren't ready to eat yet. Also, I've never had StLs that cooked in less than 5 hours. A half hour later I sauced and 20 min after that I pulled them. One rack was a bit thinner than the other and dried out a bit. The meatier one was perfect and delicious. I had lit the coals at 1pm, put on the meat at 2:15 and pulled them a little after 7. When I checked the cooker at 11 before I went to bed, it had gently fallen to 202º. With that tiny bit of coal I can comfortably say that I got 8 hours of useable cook temps and probably could have gotten more if I had continued managing it.
Lessons learned:
1. You can't outsmart a butt.
2. If you tend your vents for the first hour or so of a cook, you can find a sweet spot that will hold pretty well even without a controller.
3. I need to experiment with briquette vs lump. So far, I'm finding lump to burn longer, preheat faster and have less ash.
4. I need to get better at ash management/learning how to open the firebox without ash blowing all over myself and my other cookers.
5. Don't move the cooker when there's water in the pan! It WILL slosh on your fire. (Duh)
6. After cleaning out my water pan three times, I can see why people opt for the slide out or bricks, but I have a plan for that. That said, it's not that bad and do not regret my decision to get the drop in.
7. Smoke flavor is much more controllable than on my old cooker. With my old offset, it was way less subtle and often overpowering when the wind kicked up. 6-8 chunks gets me close on the BB without any acrid sootiness.
8. When you find a vent combo that doesn't fluctuate too much, WALK AWAY!
9. Ribs cook quicker than I'm used to so check early/often.
10. This cooker requires far less attention than my offset, but a little attention early in the cook goes a long way to keep the temps rock solid.
11. When someone tells you that bark production suffers in a water smoker, ignore them.
12. This cooker is AWESOME!
And now some pictures (none of the butt).
