I got a charcoal basket back when I originally bought my LSG Vertical Offset so I decided to bust it out yesterday and do a mini smoke in the warming oven with my CyberQ. My wood supply is running low and I have a ton of charcoal in the garage so I figured this was probably a good of time as any to do a test run. I really just wanted to get a sense of how long I might can cook with this smoker unattended if needed. Decided to cook a pork butt, some ribs, and some sausage. I also made a new batch of sauce.
Overall, this worked pretty well. I loaded up the charcoal basket with two bags of KBB and apple wood chunks. I fired up about a half a chimney of charcoal and let that get going good before dumping into the top corner of the charcoal basket. The basket has channels but I hear the fire just jumps over them so I figured this approach would work fine. I put the basket in the fire box with a water pan directly over the charcoal basket. I took the plate that normally separates the warming oven from the firebox completely out so the water pan was really the main baffle between the charcoal basket and the upper racks. I setup the Guru for 250 and let it roll.
General thoughts are this worked very well. I had the exhaust baffles too closed off to start with so I had some issues getting over 225 but opening those up a little fixed that problem. Really didn't have to do much to control the temp other than make a few adjustments to the exhaust vents. I think I got around 11 hours at 250 when I stopped cooking and the heat stayed at around 225 with the little bit of charcoal that was still burning for another hour or so. I also probably should have started out with a little less lit charcoal.
One thing I noticed is the initial setup for all this is a lot bigger pain than just running on splits largely because when doing that, I can throw in some unlit charcoal along with three splits, and light the gas assist. That takes less than five minutes and you can be cooking in less than 30. The whole process for this cook probably took 30 minutes just getting started because I had to drag all this stuff out of the garage, get the guru hooked up, get a chimney started, and get the basket all loaded up. I think all that hassle is probably worth it if doing an overnight cook for something big like a brisket where I just want to put the meat in and go to sleep which is probably how I will use this in the future. One other thing to note is I used a pretty big pan of water. Had I not used that, I probably could have squeezed out some additional time just because of the extra energy required to heat up the water.
Pics below!
Overall, this worked pretty well. I loaded up the charcoal basket with two bags of KBB and apple wood chunks. I fired up about a half a chimney of charcoal and let that get going good before dumping into the top corner of the charcoal basket. The basket has channels but I hear the fire just jumps over them so I figured this approach would work fine. I put the basket in the fire box with a water pan directly over the charcoal basket. I took the plate that normally separates the warming oven from the firebox completely out so the water pan was really the main baffle between the charcoal basket and the upper racks. I setup the Guru for 250 and let it roll.
General thoughts are this worked very well. I had the exhaust baffles too closed off to start with so I had some issues getting over 225 but opening those up a little fixed that problem. Really didn't have to do much to control the temp other than make a few adjustments to the exhaust vents. I think I got around 11 hours at 250 when I stopped cooking and the heat stayed at around 225 with the little bit of charcoal that was still burning for another hour or so. I also probably should have started out with a little less lit charcoal.
One thing I noticed is the initial setup for all this is a lot bigger pain than just running on splits largely because when doing that, I can throw in some unlit charcoal along with three splits, and light the gas assist. That takes less than five minutes and you can be cooking in less than 30. The whole process for this cook probably took 30 minutes just getting started because I had to drag all this stuff out of the garage, get the guru hooked up, get a chimney started, and get the basket all loaded up. I think all that hassle is probably worth it if doing an overnight cook for something big like a brisket where I just want to put the meat in and go to sleep which is probably how I will use this in the future. One other thing to note is I used a pretty big pan of water. Had I not used that, I probably could have squeezed out some additional time just because of the extra energy required to heat up the water.
Pics below!
