Does the SnS affect the stall?

[donner]

Hi all,
I'm new to the forum and to smoking in general, so i hope this isn't too dumb a question. I've did a couple butts before moving on from the 7-in-1 to a weber with an SNS (just this past weekend).

I used the SNS for the first time on sunday on a pretty small butt. I was immediately impressed by how well the weber and SNS held temp through the whole cook. The other thing i noticed was that i never really hit a stall. It certainly slowed, but not for the length of time i've previously experienced.

I did some reading here, and I learned about why the stall happens in Meathead's article and it got me wondering. Does the SNS provide a humid enough environment to minimize the stall? (i.e. similarly to an electric cooker, with a high humidity) Or is all the water gone by that late in the cook (i didn't open it up to see as we were in the process of rearranging a room for the new baby).

So again, sorry if it's a dumb question. I'm just trying to figure out makes the cooker behave in a way that is different from other charcoal smokers somehow.

[DWCowles]

Welcome donner

[Breadhead]

donner ...

If someone could invent a cooker that would eleminate the stall... They would become a multi millionaire and go into the BBQ Hall of Fame.😎

[fuzzydaddy]

Welcome to The Pit donner!

[Timo]

Does the SNS provide a humid enough environment to minimize the stall? (i.e. similarly to an electric cooker, with a high humidity)

If I have understood it correctly, the humidity has just the opposite effect:

"Until now I had always believed that water pans were important to keep the cooking chamber high humidity and thereby reduce moisture loss from the meat. Apparently it does this somewhat, but they also cause the cook to take longer." http://amazingribs.com/tips_and_technique/the_stall.html

[David Parrish]

Welcome to The Pit donner! We're glad you're here. Here's what I think. Because you never opened the kettle it stayed very humid throughout the cook. The water in the water reservoir lasts about 5 hours. That's intentional because after 5 hours the meat is in the stall and sweating all the humidity your cooker needs. By leaving the lid on the sweating meat was able to keep the kettle humid, which helped you blow through the stall.

(Cooking at 225 F to 250 F) One annoying aspect of the stall is that it will get you even if you cook past the typical stall temp range IF you let the meat experience a change in humidity. For example, if you wrap a pork butt in foil when it hits 150 F you can blow right through the stall and hit 203 F relatively quickly. The sacrifice you make is that the meat won't have a lot of bark and it will retain more water than an unwrapped butt. I prefer the taste of the unwrapped meat as the rendered fats in the meat give the meat all the juiciness it needs in my opinion and the water just makes it taste, well, watery. OK that might seem like I changed topics mid paragraph but let me now pull this all together. Let's say you've cooked a wrapped butt past the stall, (150 F to 175 F) and the meat's at 185 F. You decide to unwrap it because you want bark. What happens? The meat will stall. All that humidity will start rushing out of the meat and you might even see your internal meat temps go down from evaporative cooling. So the moral of the story is you can beat the stall if you keep up the humidity, but you'll likely have inferior bark and the meat will have more water moisture. By keeping your lid on for the entire cook you may have had enough humidity in there to beat the stall. So answer us this... What was the bark like? Was it crunchy or mushy? Did the meat seem a little watery? If your answers are mushy and watery, it's likely you had a high humidity environment and blew right through the stall.

Also, was there water in your ash pan? That water is from condensation and is an indicator you had a high humid environment (or that you missed the water reservoir when you poured your water in initially).

Now all that said, you could have cooked it up to 203 F and then opened it up to set the bark, which might get you the best of both worlds. Once the meat hits 203 F it's done, even if you let the internal temp head south while the bark sets as the meat cooks unwrapped.

So think about these things and lets us know a few more facts about your cook. I'm interested to know if you really did in fact beat the stall.

Note if you cook at temps much higher than 250 F the stall almost disappears.

[Danjohnston949]

Dang Boss, Once Again You Learned Me Something! Now if I can Member It? From Fargo ND, Dan

[Breadhead]

David Parrish ... Well said! You explained that as well as I've ever heard it said. Tipping my hat to you Sir.👍

[David Parrish]

If I have understood it correctly, the humidity has just the opposite effect:

"Until now I had always believed that water pans were important to keep the cooking chamber high humidity and thereby reduce moisture loss from the meat. Apparently it does this somewhat, but they also cause the cook to take longer." http://amazingribs.com/tips_and_technique/the_stall.html

The water pan adds to cook time because it adds water to the mix for more evaporative cooling as the water adheres to the meat. But the stall is impacted by pit temp, air flow, and humidity. At some point if you have enough humidity combined with a low amount of airflow you beat the stall. Taken to the extreme example, a butt wrapped in foil is a high humidity low airflow environment and is the fastest way to cook.

[donner]

Thanks for the replies.

The cook finished in an odd way because of life factors (lets just say a friends wife left him the day before and we had a last-minute gathering to keep him busy). I had to remove it from the grill early to get out of the house.

I ended up removing the meat at ~189° and had to basically shelve it for the next day. That said it was good, but you're right that the bark probably was a bit soft.

I guess my question about the humid environment goes back to living in the south. Enough humidity in the air and you don't really cool off much when you sweat.

i know i need more repetitions to really learn my system, (which is why i have some ribs going right now!)

thanks again for the help.