Hey all - First and foremost, thanks for the wealth of info here. You guys definitely put the AMAZING in amazingribs.com. If it wasn't for this place I don't think I'd be smoking at all.
Starting smoking about a year ago, and went electric as my first smoker. Mainly because I had no idea what I was doing, and saw something that I could control with my phone and figured that'd make things easy for a rookie like me. Following most of Meathead's recipes here gave me decent results, and the family was happy, but I always felt like I could be doing better. Did some research and decided that I wanted to try the PBC as my next step in this adventure. Well, it came in Thursday, and I had my first cook on it yesterday (5.4 lb bone-in pork butt). To preface: It was a misty rain and cold - 38° when I lit up - at 10 AM yesterday morning in North Indiana.
I followed the lighting instructions laid out by fzxdoc to the T and everything went off exactly like I was expecting it to. Hung the meat and got the temperature spike up to the 400-410 range (at this point I added a little weight to my new lid since I was worried about leakage - my wife was wondering what the heck her duck rock things from the garden were doing on top of the smoker......
) and I got the slow but steady drop back down to the 290'ish range. I'd get bounces back into the low 300's, but it was hanging right around where it should. When it stayed around 295 I went out and added a little more weight (more ducks!) to the lid fearing that I might be running just a smidge too high and the temp dropped to 280. I was really pleased and couldn't believe how easy it had been up to this point.
After a couple of hours I realized I was continuing to get a slow and steady temp drop. When I got down to 240-250 I went out, took the weight off of the lid and cracked it. We ran right back up to the low 300's over the course of several minutes, and I closed her down again. Did not add weight to the lid this time. Same as before, the temp slowly ran down to the 250 range. This time I let it go, figuring the weather was probably a factor, AND I was right in the middle of a Stranger Things episode so I waited a bit to check in on it again.
By the time I got back outside the PBC was down to about 220, and the meat was just hitting 160. I took it off of the hooks, and put in the grate (did NOT wrap) thinking that pulling the rebar out should help it increase in temp. It did not. I cracked the lid again and could only get her up to 250 or so, and it would continue the slow drift down from there every time I closed it up. I tried rebar out, rebar in, lid cracked one way, the other way, lid all the way off, and I had zero luck getting the temp to increase. At this point (roughly 6 hours or so into the cook, pork butt was just starting to hit 170 in some areas) I decided to go ahead and wrap and the PBC dropped down into the 180 range in the time I had the lid open to wrap and barely got back up above 200 from that point on.
I also received an emergency call from work and knew I'd be headed there in a few hours so I decided to take the wrapped meat and finish it in the oven. It was delicious by the way (better than any of my pork before on the electric), but unfortunately I didn't get any pics of the finished product because I had to leave. Pics attached are from the dry brine the night before, and the startup yesterday morning.
Used the Kingsford Original, and the top coals in the chimney were just starting to get some ash on them when I added them to the basket. Bottom vent was cracked 1/4 per the PBC recommendations. What did I do wrong? Did my stall cause my PBC to stall? I hadn't been doing any wrapping up until yesterday and I'm curious if that's going to be required on the PBC going forward to keep temps up? Do you guys make any adjustments to the vent based on the outside environment (hot day, cold day, rain, snow, etc.)?
Looking for ways to improve! Thanks all for your help! I've been trying to read as much of this PBC forum as I can to see if I could come across anyone else that's described the same problem, but haven't found it yet. I'm sure it's in here somewhere, so preemptive apologies if this is somewhat of a common occurrence.
Starting smoking about a year ago, and went electric as my first smoker. Mainly because I had no idea what I was doing, and saw something that I could control with my phone and figured that'd make things easy for a rookie like me. Following most of Meathead's recipes here gave me decent results, and the family was happy, but I always felt like I could be doing better. Did some research and decided that I wanted to try the PBC as my next step in this adventure. Well, it came in Thursday, and I had my first cook on it yesterday (5.4 lb bone-in pork butt). To preface: It was a misty rain and cold - 38° when I lit up - at 10 AM yesterday morning in North Indiana.
I followed the lighting instructions laid out by fzxdoc to the T and everything went off exactly like I was expecting it to. Hung the meat and got the temperature spike up to the 400-410 range (at this point I added a little weight to my new lid since I was worried about leakage - my wife was wondering what the heck her duck rock things from the garden were doing on top of the smoker......
) and I got the slow but steady drop back down to the 290'ish range. I'd get bounces back into the low 300's, but it was hanging right around where it should. When it stayed around 295 I went out and added a little more weight (more ducks!) to the lid fearing that I might be running just a smidge too high and the temp dropped to 280. I was really pleased and couldn't believe how easy it had been up to this point.After a couple of hours I realized I was continuing to get a slow and steady temp drop. When I got down to 240-250 I went out, took the weight off of the lid and cracked it. We ran right back up to the low 300's over the course of several minutes, and I closed her down again. Did not add weight to the lid this time. Same as before, the temp slowly ran down to the 250 range. This time I let it go, figuring the weather was probably a factor, AND I was right in the middle of a Stranger Things episode so I waited a bit to check in on it again.
By the time I got back outside the PBC was down to about 220, and the meat was just hitting 160. I took it off of the hooks, and put in the grate (did NOT wrap) thinking that pulling the rebar out should help it increase in temp. It did not. I cracked the lid again and could only get her up to 250 or so, and it would continue the slow drift down from there every time I closed it up. I tried rebar out, rebar in, lid cracked one way, the other way, lid all the way off, and I had zero luck getting the temp to increase. At this point (roughly 6 hours or so into the cook, pork butt was just starting to hit 170 in some areas) I decided to go ahead and wrap and the PBC dropped down into the 180 range in the time I had the lid open to wrap and barely got back up above 200 from that point on.
I also received an emergency call from work and knew I'd be headed there in a few hours so I decided to take the wrapped meat and finish it in the oven. It was delicious by the way (better than any of my pork before on the electric), but unfortunately I didn't get any pics of the finished product because I had to leave. Pics attached are from the dry brine the night before, and the startup yesterday morning.
Used the Kingsford Original, and the top coals in the chimney were just starting to get some ash on them when I added them to the basket. Bottom vent was cracked 1/4 per the PBC recommendations. What did I do wrong? Did my stall cause my PBC to stall? I hadn't been doing any wrapping up until yesterday and I'm curious if that's going to be required on the PBC going forward to keep temps up? Do you guys make any adjustments to the vent based on the outside environment (hot day, cold day, rain, snow, etc.)?
Looking for ways to improve! Thanks all for your help! I've been trying to read as much of this PBC forum as I can to see if I could come across anyone else that's described the same problem, but haven't found it yet. I'm sure it's in here somewhere, so preemptive apologies if this is somewhat of a common occurrence.
) placed on the lid just in case? 
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