Well.. the ribs turned out pretty good. Unfortunately, I don't have internet acces from home, so once I left work on Friday, I couldn't check for your responses.
But, fortunately, I did bone up on the pork ribs techniques, and those worked fine for beef.
here's what I did:
I removed the membrane from the ribs (called finger ribs in the store... not sure if that's spare or back)
dry rubbed and let sit in fridge overnight
brought the ribs to room temp while firing up the dera
sprayed with a mixture of apple juice, splash of cider vinegar, swig of Jameson's Irish whiskey (didn't have any cheapo bourbon on me), and a little water for fear of the Apple juice being too sweet.
hung on rib racks and smoked with mesquite and a little pecan for 3 hours spraying every hour
mopped with jalapeno jelly thinned with a little warmed water and wrapped tight in foil
smoked for another 3.5 hours without opening the foil.
I was afraid it was going to be sweet because of the apple juice and pepper jelly, but it was very tasty. Meaty with a nice smoke flavor. it was a little difficult to adequately spray the ribs all over because of their large size, so the ends against the back of the smoker turned out a little dry. The meat didn't pull back from the bone during the first 3 hours, but did considerably while in the foil.
In essence, I followed your pork rib techniques with a 3-3 cook method, and the beef turned out fine.
Thanks for your responses. I'm happy to know that I didn't do anything too glaringly wrong for beef. (*whew*)
oh, and Bill,
your new avitar now clears up your monicker.
You dont want to know what I was thinking.
You were most likely thinking correctly..

I almost made the avatar animated, with the weiner slipping into the bun, but decided to leave a little to your filthy imaginations!! :lol: