Store sold Wood for fuel and flavor question for newbies

[grossepellets]

Yup just 1 or 2 chunks for the whole cook. You can add the 2nd after the 1st is done although I'm not convinced it matters. A bag of chunks should last you many cooks. If thats not enough smoke flavor for you, add one or two more next time.

Here's my kettle setup for smoking. I put down a good amount of unlit coals, with a couple wood chunks in the pile, and then pour on maybe 15 lit coals. Catch the temperature on the way up and bring the intake down to a very small opening. Try to keep the lid closed as much as possible to not feed the fire. You can't control the fire if the kettle isn't kept sealed up.

I think you're probably just laying on the smoke too thick though. I promise you'll taste lots of smoke flavor with 1-2 fist sized chunks. :becky: You might want to add another chunk or two in the future, but you'll wind up with a butt that you won't want to throw out on the first time around.

That is not a whole lot of charcoal - how much charcoal burns in a 12 to 18 hr cook like this one you have set up here?

 

[Lake Dogs]

Grosse, you probably have multiple problems causing undesirable (bitter) results. First, start with a hot clean-burning fire. It doesn't take a lot (reference pics above) to do this. Wait until the fire is completely underway before putting meat on. For that matter, wait before putting wood chunks on as well. When you do apply wood chunks, if you can, have them be warm if not hot already. And DRY. Don't soak them. What happens is that the wet will lower the fire temperatures and ends up producing billowy white smoke vs. a nice thin "sweet blue" smoke. When the smoke is thin enough that you can barely see it, that's when you've got it dialed in.
Ok, hot fire, warm & dry chunks. Then, dont smother the file. Only a chunk or two. They'll last about an hour, sometimes longer. Also, you may have been cooking at too low a temperature. First, and IMHO the biggest problem when people talk about temperature, is we're talking about the temperature on the cooking surface itself. This may or may not be anywhere close to those external mounted thermometers. If you have to, get a $5 oven thermometer at WallyWorld. Then, dont let the surface temp go below 220. I suggest keeping it in a 240-270 range somewhere. Odds are that your butt will get done a whole lot faster than 12 hours. The rest, like amount of smoke, type of smoke, it's all up to you and your personal taste preference. I smoke with nothing but hickory, which is a little on the strong/thick side. As a result I foil my butts around that 4.5 hour mark. That my preference; it you disagree that's fine. However, if you're getting black and bitter barbecue, odds are you need to reduce the white billowy smoke to sweet blue, and possibly reduce the amount of time it's on smoke at all.

Clean burning fire
Clean dry wood (can be a little green, just dont over-do this, and no moss or fungus on the wood, no beetles, etc)
Sweet blue smoke (not billowy white or heaven forbid black smoke)
Good temperature range (220 minimum, 240-270 more optimal, keep out of the 280+ range especially if you're not extremely experienced and understand burning sugars, etc)

Best of luck.