I am doing my second cook on my PBC. First one, perfect chicken, ribs not up to snuff. Today, I am doing ribs and I lit the PBC per advice obtained here, filled the basket with Kinsford and took 40 out and lit in Chimney. I placed the in the charcoal basket after the coals in the chimney were red/white. Waited about 20 minutes and placed the ribs in as well as placing the lid back on. Temp 428, meat was 72. One hour later, Temp in PHC was 215. Probe from my Thermopro is halfway to charbed . 2 hours, 217,meat 162. Going on 3 hours now, PBC is 196, met 160. Damper is 1/4 open. What am I doing wrong? The meat probe may not be inserted correctly but I am using a hand held on the next measurement .
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Huntington Beach welcomes you. I'm a kettle guy but it sounds like you need more air. That's all I got.im going to search for a post in the last two days by Kathyern who just answered your questions. I think some one may be along by then. -
Welcome to fun and learning in the Pit!
I'm not a PBC guy, but I'd crack the lid a little to see if the temperature comes back up a little.
There re are others with more experience that will chime in in a bit. fzxdoc ?Comment
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giro I can't find her post. I don't remember where it its. It's was a nice write up as she often does. I'm sure that will help your next cook.
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Hi giro , sounds like you got some great advice. If the temp falls like that, then for sure crack the lid--but only for a few minutes and keep a close eye on it, as the temp can really take off quickly.
As kmhfive says, adjusting the lower damper once it's set pretty close to recommended by the PBC folks for your altitude won't do anything to modify the temperature. It's not like the lower vent on a kettle. I have mine set a little more open than the PBC folks recommend for my altitude (3500 ft) and my PBC rocks along at 275ish for most cooks. Some sea level folks here say they've got to close theirs a bit more to hit that sweet spot.
Next time, try opening the vent a bit more before you start the cook. Then light the fire just as you have for these two cooks and see what happens. Changing one thing at a time is the best way to dial the PBC in for consistently great cooks.
How did the ribs turn out?
KathrynComment
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Welcome from Indiana. The Doc is in the house and I would recommend heeding her advice!Comment
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Welcome to The Pit.Comment
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The temperature staid around 250, I did occasionally crack the the lid as advised from you guys and gals. I did the pull test at 190 meat temperature and they pulled away from bone. I mopped them with sauce and placed back in cooker for about 30 minutes. They were very tender and juicy and except for some of the skinnier ends. Over all, a lot better than my first.Comment
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giro Welcome! I, too, was a PBC rookie this year (got mine for Christmas), and struggled with keeping consistent temps from day one. You can click on my profile and read some of my diatribes; might help you feel better about your time spent with your PBC.
That said, I think I have it fairly well dialed in now, but it took quite a few cooking sessions to do so. One thing I tried to stick to was: Don't freak out when problems start, just change one thing and wait, wait, wait! This is charcoal grilling, not gas, and things don't happen immediately. When you crack the lid, do so for at least ten minutes (the PBC site actually recommends 20 minutes in one of the videos I watched). Then put the lid back on, and wait for 10, 15, 20 minutes to see what the final temp change will be. You might get a ramp up in temps even after putting the lid back on, then it'll fall like a rock after 10 minutes, then after 15-20 it'll either stabilize or climb back up a few degrees. It's all about waiting, and I just didn't take that to heart the first two or three months I used the PBC.
You mentioned you waited on dumping the hot coals from the chimney into the PBC until they were red/white. If you're waiting to see the top of the pile solid white, that's too long! Here's a great article from Weber on using a chimney starter: https://www.weber.com/US/en/blog/how...himney-starter
From the article:
The key words are 'a bit gray with ash'. I was also waiting until they turned all gray, but if you look at this picture, you'll see what's happening down at the bottom of the pile:Depending on weather conditions, in about 10 to 15 minutes the coals should be sufficiently lit to pour into the grill. You’ll know the coals are ready when the ones on top have started to turn a bit gray with ash.
Those briqs in the middle are getting hotter and hotter. Once they get hot, it takes a LOOOOOONG time for them to cool down! What I found was that the one or two smallish pieces of newspaper I was using just wasn't giving a large enough boost to the bottom briqs to really get the upper ones started quickly enough. By the time 20-25 minutes rolled around, the inner ones were well into their mid-life, and the upper/outer ones weren't even started, or just barely. So when the top ones finally fully ashed over, the inner ones were near the end of their lives, and hot as the surface of the sun. Dump those onto the basket in the PBC, and you have the recipe for uneven lighting of the cold briqs.
The two most recent cooking sessions I've done with my PBC benefitted greatly with three points:
1) Use more starter paper. I added another page or so of paper to the chimney a good three minutes after the others had burned out. I scooped the burnt-out paper ash out of the cooker, so I didn't have a ton of ash floating around for hours, and added the extra paper and burned again. I will be switching to using the cubes from Weber instead (my local Meijer store was out, of course, when I went last week). But with extra paper, those top briqs were grayed adequately within 20 minutes, and I got a 9.5+ hour burn out of one basketful of Kingsford Blue (standard). That beats my record by over THREE HOURS. And temps stabilized for much of the cook at 285F. I'm at 700'-ish above sea level in Michigan, with 80-90F days and a good 40-60% humidity all day long now.
2) More cooking sessions = more black gook buildup in the barrel and on the lid. That is actually a REALLY good thing, trust me. As many have mentioned in other threads, that buildup is going to act as a seal on your lid (and that helps control airflow in and out of the barrel), as well as helping to insulate the barrel (which helps prevent wind/rain from forcing temp fluctuations).
3) Finally, do yourself a big favor and TRUST NOTHING AND NO ONE. OK, maybe that's extreme, but with that in mind, don't take your thermometer for granted and assume your temperature readings are 100% accurate. I have both a Maverick ET-732 dual-probe meter and a new ThermoWorks Smoke dual-probe meter, and the ET-732 reads high by about 10F on the cooker temp probe. I replaced the probes recently with water-resistant longer corded ones, and it's still off by about 10F, maybe a little lower. The Smoke is almost right on the money. You test these against boiling water in a small pan. Boiling water is always going to be right around 212F, depending on your altitude (212F is at sea level, and it goes down the higher you get). For the ET-732 to be 10F off at 212F, how off was it at 300F or 350F or 400F?! Turns out, way off. Calibrate your probes.
Most importantly, practice. Find a tasty and inexpensive meat in your area and practice with it over multiple cooks. For me, that's been pork butt/shoulder and pork tenderloin, at around $1.29/lb lately (was under $0.99/lb last summer for butts). It's the most fun and fulfilling homework you'll ever have, guaranteed!
Good luck on your endeavors, and welcome to The Pit!
EDIT: Oh, one more really important point which fzxdoc drums into everyone's psyche and is quite helpful: take notes of each session! Grab a small wired notebook and scribble some notes about the ambient air temp/humidity, if it was sunny (was the PBC in the hot sun all day?), what the meat was, how full was the cooker, did you throw wood chunks in, were you using a different brand of briquette, did the meat go on late, and a bunch of notes on the internal and cooker temps at certain times, like:
0:45 - 375F/55F
1:30 - 320F/75F
2:15 - 312F/87F
...
10:00 - 282F/200F - Still not probe tender.
10:20 - 280F/205F - Probe tender!
Looking back at my notes, I know exactly what I want to try changing with each session.Last edited by abandonedbrain; July 8, 2017, 03:40 PM.Comment
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I had the same problem last week - never a problem during prior cooks. I just had to periodically crack the lid. I was using it at a vacation rental and was in an enclosed. small backyard. The air was very still and I concluded that it just wasn't breathing enough. Cracking the lid for 20 minutes or so, a few times, did the trick. The ribs came out great.Comment
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If you are not using all of your hooks you can hang one on the rim of the barrel under the lid. Works pretty decent.Comment
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