JustinTexan1988 , welcome back. Glad to hear you felt like the ribs and chicken came out well.
Unfortunately there is no holy grail to wood smoking (except for thin blue smoke)... Way to many factors involved for wood burning to be able to give you and everyone else the same silver bullet answer. I'm not sure how much you have played around on the main AmazingRibs website or if you came straight to the pit and just started asking questions. If you haven't trawled the main site and read a number of the main articles then you really need to (especially being new to this) as a lot of your basic questions and things you need to know will be answered there in detail. Here is a link to one of the articles about smoking with wood.
In regards to your latest post:
It would help if you were more specific with your terminology in reference to the size of wood. You said you throw wood chunks in there and then a sentence later reference half a log? When I think of chunks I think of the bags of chunks I can buy at my local Wal-Mart. Chunks are typically smaller than or maybe the size of your fist. Logs are simply that. My stick burner doesn't have an enormous firebox (you can see it in my profile picture). The wood I put in there are splits. I will normally take a log and split it down into quarters or less depending on the original size of the log. Laying horizontally I get them in size to be around 4-6" tall to about 10-12" long. That is what works for me and my cooker... may not be the same for you... all cookers are a little different. From the picture I saw on the internet and trying to judge the size of your firebox I would say you are going to need smaller splits similar to around the size I am using but I'm not 100% on that either. You will have to play with it and see what works best.
I add a basket of lit charcoal (and I know other log and stick burner guys that do the same) just to create a solid bed of coals at the very beginning and then use wood the rest of the time. If you want to build a fire using all wood then you definitely can but make sure you get an established bed of coals.
I typically add my first split or two of wood before I add the meat so I can get good smoke established (thin blue smoke). Sometimes when you add wood to the fire you can get the gray smoke for a bit (especially if the wood has high moisture still and a lot of bark). Cold meat takes on the most smoke so I want to make sure the smoke is clean before I first put it on. If you have a separate place to burn wood (another cooker or fire barrel) you can pre burn some wood before adding it to the fire throughout the cook to cut down on unclean burns in your pit.
The way my cooker works is I usually have a couple splits in there burning but they were put in at staggered times as one gets pretty well spent I add another one... For me, under regular weather conditions, that is about every 30-45 minutes. I try to maintain a small but hot fire. Burn rate can be affected by an array of things: outside temp, wind, thickness of the metal of your cooker, is the cooker insulated, moisture content of the wood, how much bark, what kind of wood, the size of the wood, and the list goes on... This is why there is no definitive answer to give you.... every pit master must master their pit... they have to learn where and how the cooker runs best and how to control the elements and factors to the best of their ability.
I typically take my smoker temp well over my desired cook temp when adding meat. I have a modified COS (cheap offset smoker) that doesn't have the thickest of metal so it is more susceptible to temperature fluctuations and can take longer to recover. The reason I take the temp up is that a large cold mass being introduced to the cook chamber is likely to bring the cook chamber temp down plus having the door open for a bit to get the meat in there, probes ran, etc... is going to let a good deal of the hot air out. This way with a hotter running fire the temps will recover quicker.
As far as controlling temps go... I try to anticipate what is going to happen with my pit and know when it is going to need wood before the temps fall off too much or when I am going to open a door or add meat and how to get the fire running to quickly recover.... Some guys control their fires more primarily off of air intake and other guys more through the exhaust vent... other folks through a mixture of both... I personally don't try to control it by the size of the fire. I try to keep a pretty consistent fire and control it more by how much air I'm allowing into the firebox (that is what works for me... again every cooker and every pit master is a little different)... So.... Welcome to becoming a pit master who wants to smoke using only wood for heat and smoke..... it isn't easy and can take some tinkering....
As far as the pork butt is concerned.... That is the perfect cut of meat to play with and learn with. It is a very forgiving cut of meat and can handle temperature swings without any sort of major detriment to the final product and quality....
There is no quick fix or answer to make you just run this thing perfectly out the gate... Even after you have been doing it a long time you will still have days where you are fighting things the entire time... It is an art form and a craft and like mastering any other art form or craft it takes time and practice and getting to know your tools.
Unfortunately there is no holy grail to wood smoking (except for thin blue smoke)... Way to many factors involved for wood burning to be able to give you and everyone else the same silver bullet answer. I'm not sure how much you have played around on the main AmazingRibs website or if you came straight to the pit and just started asking questions. If you haven't trawled the main site and read a number of the main articles then you really need to (especially being new to this) as a lot of your basic questions and things you need to know will be answered there in detail. Here is a link to one of the articles about smoking with wood.
In regards to your latest post:
It would help if you were more specific with your terminology in reference to the size of wood. You said you throw wood chunks in there and then a sentence later reference half a log? When I think of chunks I think of the bags of chunks I can buy at my local Wal-Mart. Chunks are typically smaller than or maybe the size of your fist. Logs are simply that. My stick burner doesn't have an enormous firebox (you can see it in my profile picture). The wood I put in there are splits. I will normally take a log and split it down into quarters or less depending on the original size of the log. Laying horizontally I get them in size to be around 4-6" tall to about 10-12" long. That is what works for me and my cooker... may not be the same for you... all cookers are a little different. From the picture I saw on the internet and trying to judge the size of your firebox I would say you are going to need smaller splits similar to around the size I am using but I'm not 100% on that either. You will have to play with it and see what works best.
I add a basket of lit charcoal (and I know other log and stick burner guys that do the same) just to create a solid bed of coals at the very beginning and then use wood the rest of the time. If you want to build a fire using all wood then you definitely can but make sure you get an established bed of coals.
I typically add my first split or two of wood before I add the meat so I can get good smoke established (thin blue smoke). Sometimes when you add wood to the fire you can get the gray smoke for a bit (especially if the wood has high moisture still and a lot of bark). Cold meat takes on the most smoke so I want to make sure the smoke is clean before I first put it on. If you have a separate place to burn wood (another cooker or fire barrel) you can pre burn some wood before adding it to the fire throughout the cook to cut down on unclean burns in your pit.
The way my cooker works is I usually have a couple splits in there burning but they were put in at staggered times as one gets pretty well spent I add another one... For me, under regular weather conditions, that is about every 30-45 minutes. I try to maintain a small but hot fire. Burn rate can be affected by an array of things: outside temp, wind, thickness of the metal of your cooker, is the cooker insulated, moisture content of the wood, how much bark, what kind of wood, the size of the wood, and the list goes on... This is why there is no definitive answer to give you.... every pit master must master their pit... they have to learn where and how the cooker runs best and how to control the elements and factors to the best of their ability.
I typically take my smoker temp well over my desired cook temp when adding meat. I have a modified COS (cheap offset smoker) that doesn't have the thickest of metal so it is more susceptible to temperature fluctuations and can take longer to recover. The reason I take the temp up is that a large cold mass being introduced to the cook chamber is likely to bring the cook chamber temp down plus having the door open for a bit to get the meat in there, probes ran, etc... is going to let a good deal of the hot air out. This way with a hotter running fire the temps will recover quicker.
As far as controlling temps go... I try to anticipate what is going to happen with my pit and know when it is going to need wood before the temps fall off too much or when I am going to open a door or add meat and how to get the fire running to quickly recover.... Some guys control their fires more primarily off of air intake and other guys more through the exhaust vent... other folks through a mixture of both... I personally don't try to control it by the size of the fire. I try to keep a pretty consistent fire and control it more by how much air I'm allowing into the firebox (that is what works for me... again every cooker and every pit master is a little different)... So.... Welcome to becoming a pit master who wants to smoke using only wood for heat and smoke..... it isn't easy and can take some tinkering....
As far as the pork butt is concerned.... That is the perfect cut of meat to play with and learn with. It is a very forgiving cut of meat and can handle temperature swings without any sort of major detriment to the final product and quality....
There is no quick fix or answer to make you just run this thing perfectly out the gate... Even after you have been doing it a long time you will still have days where you are fighting things the entire time... It is an art form and a craft and like mastering any other art form or craft it takes time and practice and getting to know your tools.
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