Still learning

[phoccer]

Now that I'm keeping my PBC, time to cook more on it. My son requested baby back ribs while he's home for Spring Break. Can't let the kid down!

Bought a 3 pack of Smithville ribs and split them in half vs double hooking and risking rib drops and or ribs hanging in the coals. I decided to go with the PBC as is vs hooking up the Pitmaster IQ 110. Learning how to run this thing as it was meant is appealing to me, especially if I start taking it on the summer fishing trips.

Put 40 Kingsford Pro in the chimney and lit them for 15 minutes. I decided to do a little more briquettes than usual and for a little more time since it's a cool overcast day with temps in the low 40's and low wind. Dumped on the lit coals and immediately hung the meat. I've never had an issue getting temps to rise in the PBC using this method but today the temps started at 225 and immediately began dropping. After 15 minutes I was running at 215. No problem, crack the lid! fzxdoc has provided some great stickies in here so I read about cooking these half racks and went over the lighting tips to see I should run the temps up to about 20-30 above where I wanted them to settle then reseat the lid. So I ran temps up to 318 and slid the lid back on tight. Temps ran up a little bit more to peak at 340. Temps then stayed pretty solidly in the 305 to 325 range after the peak with an occasional spike up into the mid 330's but those spikes were short lived.

So now I'm curious about something. I have a good seal on the lid now after a dozen cooks. I give the lid a little twist and can feel the "gunk" getting a grip and I don't see smoke coming out under the rim anywhere. So on that front I appear to be good. What I'm curious about is if I should be sliding the lid back on as I HIT the temps I want to run at vs sliding the lid back on when temps are 20-30 above where I want to end?

Rib cook went great running in that higher temp range, just want to figure this out a bit more so if I decide to run it a touch cooler, I'll know better how to target my temps. One thing for sure, I need to do a bunch of consistent cooks. I keep tinkering with different vent settings, lighting techniques, and fiddling with the IQ. Plan to run it as is this year just to get a better feel for how it wants to run.

[Jerod Broussard]

It depends on the fuel and what I am cooking as to when I slide the lid back on.

I know with B & B and a good light that stuff sticks where it hits. Kingsford on the other hand always needed a certain degree of over-shoot.

[phoccer]

Good to know. I've got some B & B in the garage as well.

I figured it probably had more to do with the fact that I was using Kingsford Pro and fzxdoc is using KBB from what I understand. So KBB acts as she posted in that it runs down from when the lid is put on and the Pro version may run up a bit more before settling. I'll keep things the same for the next several cooks and see if it acts the same way each time.

[Mr. Bones]

Man, that looks jus great!
Very interestin, followin along as ya experiment with yer PBC...
Great post, brother phoccer !

[fzxdoc]

I use both Pro and Original--Pro for short cooks and Original for the long ones, phoccer .

I always start both with a 15-10-10 lighting procedure for reproducibility. Sometimes Pro takes 20 min in the chimney, though. The barrel is always super hot with no white smoke by the time I add the meat. Temps come down within the first half hour or so and blue smoke comes on pretty quickly too.

Both act about the same when I crack the lid--nice big temp spike then settles back in at a higher temp than before.

I always crack the lid on the side opposite the vent for consistency.

Kathryn

[phoccer]

Data for the data geeks out there.


Took the ribs off at the 3 hour mark. Ribs would easily pull out of the meat at that point.

[fzxdoc]

Sounds like you didn't get a good enough light to start with, phoccer . Once you solved that problem, the rest of the cook looks rock solid beautiful. I enjoyed seeing your data sheet. Thanks.

Kathryn

[phoccer]

Yeah, I looked through some of my first cooks and following the lighting method I used(the PBC chimney method) would result in a spike of temps around an hour into the cook. What I THINK was going on was that I didn't have a good seal with the lid early on so temps would wander up then settle down. Now that I appear to have a good seal, temps won't continue to creep up like they used to when I first received my PBC.

[fzxdoc]

phoccer I like your game plan of working that PBC steadily, to learn how it cooks with the same combo of vent opening/charcoal/lighting method, etc. for a while with several different cooks. You really get to know that beast that way. It's a simple cooker, but if you're wanting it to cook reproducibly like an appliance, taking the time to watch the nuances of each cook is a fun way to do it. Slow and steady wins the race.

Plus, since you seem to be a hands-on guy (I'm often the same way), I recommend that you use 2 ambient probes in the PBC on either side of the barrel. I put one on the vent side and the second on the side opposite. You'll be surprised how much less often you're tempted to fiddle with the PBC temperature profile. Ask me how I know.

K.

[PappyBBQ]

Yup.. It's kinda figuring out what works for you and your PBC. I really don't pay much attention to the clock when I'm firing mine up. I put 40 in a chimney and about 1/2 way to ashed over I toss in my wood chunks to get them burning real good. Once ash-over is achieved I dump into the basket, put the basket in the barrel and leave it lid off for right around 4 minutes. Then I put the rods in, put the lid on and go inside to monitor the barrel temp and finish preparing the meat. It's typically about 15 minutes before I go out and hang the meat. By then my barrel is pretty tuned in to 260-280, more typically higher in that range. I'll get a short spike from adding the meat to about 290. Over the next hour the barrel will creep down to the 260-265 range and hang there for the duration. Since I use KBB i have, on occasion, had to go out and crack the lid for a couple of minutes, but never more than that at a time. Now for poultry it's a whole different procedure since I want way higher temps... As always, YMMV