I am starting a smoke tonight at midnight (15 lb packer and 9 lb pork butt) and don't have time to build any modification, but I was wondering if anyone can advise on their method for adding coals to a long smoke on a Weber 22.5. I use the basic blue bag of Kingsford. I have problems with my smoker overheating and I will be starting with the minion method, but I usually need to add more coals a couple of times over the 16 hours smoke. When do you start adding more coals? Do you light the coals first before adding? if lit, how do you get them safely from the chimney to the smoker? Any other advice? Thanks.
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That's strange. I've done butts without re-feeding coals.
Do you start with a full basket? -
Full basket other than the hollow center. You get 16-18 hours on a single basket?Comment
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I use Harry Soo's donut, which is what you're describing. I put the chimney in the center of the basket, then pour KBB around it until the basket is full up and a bit mounded up. Pull the chimney and put 40 coals in the chimney and light. Once they are grey and ashed over, i add them in the center. I've done a full packer brisket and big pork butts on that without an issue of having to add more coals. I run my bottom vents this way: 1 fully closed, 2 about 1/3 open. My top vent varies between 1/4 and 1/2 open and that is what is I use for temperature management. This gives me a top grate temp of 240 +/-.
These pictures are set up for beef ribs (plate) so I only needed 8-9 hours. This amount of charcoal will go about 12 hours, total, in my experience. If I was doing a packer brisket, I would mound it more. You can see my wood chucks tucked down under the charcoal, where I think they burn cleaner than on top and smoldering. The last picture is at the end of the rib cook .... about 9 hours.
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