Test Fire question (or two)

[Porterdriver]

Getting my new WSCGC tomorrow and plan on doing a few test fires to begin to learn this cooker. Haven't 'charcoaled' in years so I have a couple of things that have been roaming around in the ample free space in my head.

First, what temperature differential can I expect to see between an empty kettle vs. a loaded cooker with several brskets? Should I expect the settings for a given temp on an empty cooker to yield the same temp when loaded up?

Second, as I am doing my test fires, should I add my smoking wood (chunks) on top of the charcoal, as I would in a cook? Will the presence or absence of my smoking wood affect cooker settings as I try to achieve & maintain a given temperature?

Or is it possible that I am just WAY overthinking this whole thing...

[DeusDingo]

i don't know much about charcoal but a test run is meant to be just like the real thing. you'd hate to add wood during a cook and realize it's not working like a test run, right? for sanity's sake, i would run at least one run with a full mock up smoke so you know what to expect when you do the real thing

[Porterdriver]

Sounds reasonable, I'll follow your advice.

[Thunder77]

I would Ask fzxdoc, or wait a bit. I'm sure she will chime in. My initial thought is that when you load up with the meat, the temps will drop until the meat starts to heat up, then they would stabilize again.

[fzxdoc]

Porterdriver , here's how I fired up and seasoned my WSCGC (I'll cut/paste a comment I made on another topic). Worked great! BTW, I had called Weber and they said no seasoning is necessary. However, I figured that there had to be factory cooties all over that thing, so I followed Meathead's kettle seasoning recommendation.

Well, I got home from Lowes, screwed on the propane bottle, checked for leaks, and then wiped down the entire inside of the grill and grates with soap and water then rinsed and wiped dry.

Then I put 42* coals for good karma ( JPP are you reading this?) onto the charcoal grate, fired up the Snap Jet ignition and lit the pile of coals. After 10 min I turned the burner off, spread the coals, and tossed on 8 oz of pecan wood. With both dampers wide open, it took 30 min to reach the max temp of 390, cooler than I thought it would be.

After another 30 minutes, I figured all the gunk had burned away, so I tossed on a pan of thick sliced bacon. I usually cook bacon on a rimmed baking sheet lined with aluminum foil with a separate piece of crumpled-then-roughly smoothed aluminum foil on top. The bacon goes on top of the crumpled foil. The whole shebang goes in my gasser at about 325 for 40 mintutes. So when I saw the Weber stable at 390, I decided to cook the bacon in it.

The minute I lifted the lid, the temp dropped 100 degrees but slowly climbed back up to 305 where it's holding steady. I figure the bacon will be nicely cooked in about an hour.

This is the bacon I smoked in my PBC last weekend. I had a hard time getting thin and uniform slices. Some are really thick at about 1/8 inch or maybe a little more. That's why I'm figuring it may take longer. I wish the Weber had a window and an interior light like my oven so I could see what's going on. Now why didn't they think of that!

So it looks like it will be bacon cheeseburgers for supper with fresh corn on the cob, potato salad and fresh veggie salad. I plan on pouring a chimney of lit KBB on the coals to grill the burgers.

Pretty simple stuff. Tomorrow, hopefully, will be Last Meal Ribs. I may have to get more corn for that feast.

I'm having a great time!

Kathryn

*The number 42 is, in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams, "The answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything"

As far as the first smoke, I just lit her up and let her rip. I figured the best thing was to start with ribs, then chicken, then pork butts, then brisket/pastrami. That is, to my mind, a good meat learning curve for a new toy.

Oh, and I followed Bill's billg71 's lighting instructions for smoking on the WSCGC with a couple of tips from kingdarb and wbzipf as well.

Here are Bill's instructions, which I've since modified a bit as I cook different meats. It's a great place to start, though.

fzxdoc, since you're planning on cooking ribs, here's what I've learned about smoking on my SCGC:

I get my best low-temp results with a modified Soo's donut(I use a coffee can in the center) with a full chimney(or maybe 1-1/2 for long cooks like brisket or a big butt) and about 14-16 briquettes fully lit dumped in. I start with the bottom vent on smoke and the top vent full open, top closed to about 1/4" when the grate temp hits 175. I tried lighting just part of the pile with the Snapjet but that doesn't give you any control of how big a fire you start with, I didn't get good results the one time I tried it.

If I use more briquettes to light or let the temp get over 175 before closing down the top it'll go past 225 and never look back. And it'll take a while to come back down. I tried starting with 20 briquettes but that seemed to be too many, temps shot up quickly and I had to close both vents down to get back to 225-250. 20 would be about right for a 325 cook, I think.

I leave the bottom vent on smoke throughout the cook and it seems to work well that way. Just like any other cooker, it takes some learning but it holds temps well with only occasional adjustments to the top vent.

If you notice you're having to open the top vent to maintain temp when you get well into the cook(say 4-6 hrs), tap down the ashes and run the sweeper back and forth a few times to clear the bottom. Don't forget to put it back in the smoke position and watch temps closely for the next 30 minutes, you'll probably have to close the top vent down again.

Another tip: When you're finished, close the top vent and spray in the holes with a little PAM. Then run it back and forth a few times and wipe out the gunk as best as you can with a paper towel. Mine froze solid after the first 2-3 cooks and it's the devil to get it loose once it does. Tolerances are tight on that vent and it seems to gunk up easily.

Enjoy the Last Meal Ribs, that was my first cook on the SCGC as well! Cheers!

Best,
Bill

HTH,
Kathryn

[tbob4]

Huskee - I think this is a keeper for the advice above.

[Huskee]

tbob4 Done!

[billg71]

Porterdriver, congrats on your new cooker, you're gonna love it! I think you may be overthinking things a little, though. You're cooking in your back yard, not launching a satellite into geosynchronous orbit.

I still use the method Kathryn quoted, I may open up the bottom vent a little more since I switched to lump(it seems to need more air to get going) but for low-n-slow cooks I cut vents back at 175. I also tend to start with 12-14 briquettes, it makes the ramp up a little smoother. I start with the charcoal and 4-5 medium chunks(maybe 1/3 fist-size) of smoke wood and the deflector. In 30-45 minutes the cooker will be up to 175 or so, that's when I close down the vents. If you're cooking chicken maybe you'd want it to get to the 200-225 range before cutting back on the air. When it gets up to 225 I'll add water to the drip pans and put on the meat.

You'll see a drop in temps when you add the meat but they'll recover pretty quickly. If after 30 minutes or thereabouts you think it's low then open the top vent a little. Give it another 30-45 minutes and see where you are, adjust vents again if necessary.

While the WSCG isn't a ceramic cooker there's still a lot of thermal mass in it, it's not like smoking on a WSM or kettle. Make small adjustments, give it some time to respond before making more changes. And it seems to be really sensitive to how much fire you put in it to start. I've done a few cooks using the gas starter, I ignore Weber's instructions and spread the coal and wood out and only run it for 4-5 minutes, just enough to get a few coals lit. Any longer and the cooker takes off like the Space Shuttle.

If you're going to be cooking "several briskets" at a time, maybe load your test runs with a few pork butts, they'll give you a more accurate cooking scenario and are more forgiving when it comes to temp swings.

But it ain't rocket science, after a few cooks you'll have it nailed. Don't sweat the small stuff.

HTH,
Bill

P.S. Just a tip if you're using disposable drip pans: put a cooling rack on the deflector and put the pans on that. The deflector gets HOT!

[Porterdriver]

Damn, all of those calculations for nothing...took a long time to find my slide rule
Alright, I'll start planning for an ecliptic orbit then...

[Porterdriver]

Yay! It's here! I'm like a little kid at Christmas.

Wiped down the inside of the grill and grates with soap and water then rinsed and wiped dry.
Put about 20 coals onto the side of the charcoal grate over what I thought was the end of the burner, fired up the Snap Jet ignition and lit the pile of coals.
After 5 minutes turned the burner off, spread the coals, and tossed on 8 oz. (4-5 medium chunks) of smoke wood.
After 15 minutes, no change in the temp.
After 30 minutes, no change in the temp.
So…
I moved the coals onto center the charcoal grate, fired up the Snap Jet ignition and had another go at lighting the pile of coals.
After 10 minutes turned the burner off; success!
Spread the coals, and tossed on 8 oz. (4-5 medium chunks) of smoke wood.
With both dampers wide open, it took 15 min to reach the max temp of 450°.
At 30 minutes, the temp had dropped to 400°. I put the bottom vent on the dot left of Smoke and the top vent to ½ open.
At 45 minutes, the temp dropped to 350°.
At that point, I decided to cook a few chicken thighs…that post later.
This what I did and learned on the first smoke.

[billg71]

Congrats Porterdriver, they are sooo pretty when new, aren't they? And congrats on your first cook as well!

[GadjetGriller]

Good For you Porterdriver I was afraid you were gonna waste the nice fire you had just made by not throwing something on it!! So happy you didn't and threw on the chicken thighs!! Nice looking rig!! (Right by the water no less!! very nice)

[Porterdriver]

Thanks for your kudos. Yeah, I just couldn't bring myself to let that fire go out without something being cooked on it. One of the reasons (and there were many) that I went back to charcoal from gas is that there is always a wind here and I went nuts trying to keep propane burning. It took a bit to figure out the Snap Jet ignition but once I did, the wind was no longer a factor. Nice change. Now we will see how long this cooker looks great living on the Third Coast.

[fzxdoc]

Porterdriver What a beautiful sight, that WSCGC on your deck! To keep my Black Beauty clean, I always line the ash receptacle and cover the diffuser plate with heavy duty aluminum foil to keep them clean. I use a wide paintbrush to get the last of the ash scooted through the slits into the One Touch bowl and a plastic pan scraper to get the gunk off the sides of the lower half of the kettle around and below the charcoal grate. I also set two aluminum pans, side by side on the diffuser plate when smoking. Haven't used a water bath yet, though. I'm experimenting still, trying to decide if I need the humidity.

Kathryn

[Porterdriver]

Thanks for maintenance tips. Will use them all.

As far as needing humidity goes, I'm not sure that I'll even need a water bath. Currently the air temp is 83 and the humidity is 70%. Can there be enough relative humidity that a water bath for the low & slow cooks isn't needed?

[fzxdoc]

I think the purpose of a water bath is more to even out fluctuations in hot spots in a kettle rather than to compensate (or not) for ambient relative humidity, Porterdriver . I'm spoiled by the PBC's humidity where no water pan is needed; the jury is still out in my mind about using one for my WSGCC.
K.

[wbzipf]

Welcome to the club! I found that it takes a while to learn how to control the temperature. Under the kamado section CeramicChef has some great write ups about how to calibrate a kamado and learn what vent settings get you to what temperatures. I found that for low and slow cooking the WSCG truly behaves more like a kamado than the WSM, and what CeramicChef has put together applies to the WSCG.

[Porterdriver]

Thanks for the direction, I will head to the kamado section and read.