Bought a used Smoke Vault (18") off a friend and have tried it out twice. My first try was on a Thanksgiving turkey, which ended up being an unmitigated disaster. I had foiled over my water pan and didn't realize all the water had evaporated until thick black smoke (wrong kind of TBS) started billowing out copiously, opened the door and saw that all my wood had caught fire. Left the door open and went to get some water, and when I came back, the fire had spread to the dripping pan and I had me a little grease fire. Panicked and got the fire extinguisher fixing to give the dripping pan a quick shot, not realizing that fire extinguishers are designed to, well let's just say you don't need good aim to use one. Bottom line, turkey ended up covered with ABC dry chemical and I ended up doing the walk of shame to a local grocery store to pick up an over-priced, mediocre pre-cooked turkey so that my family could have the turkey dinner they were craving.
With that fun experience under my belt, I decided to go simpler and smoked a chicken last week. It was cold and windy out, and I didn't realize how important external temperature was, so I was starting to panic when the internal temp was only 135 after 2.5 hours, but I stuck it out and it eventually finished off really nicely... best darned chicken I ever tasted. I'm excited to try some more stuff in there over the coming weeks.
Anyway, I've been devouring everything I can on forums such as this one to educate my self about BBQ. One thing I'm concerned about is that my smoke vault leaks significant amounts of smoke through the front door. Others have had similar experiences, but others seem not to have that problem. Still others have apparently modified their smoke vaults to reduce leakage.
Any advice on what I might need to do? Is it a matter of opening up my top vent more? Should I look into putting some kind of seal around the door? Should I not worry about it?
With that fun experience under my belt, I decided to go simpler and smoked a chicken last week. It was cold and windy out, and I didn't realize how important external temperature was, so I was starting to panic when the internal temp was only 135 after 2.5 hours, but I stuck it out and it eventually finished off really nicely... best darned chicken I ever tasted. I'm excited to try some more stuff in there over the coming weeks.
Anyway, I've been devouring everything I can on forums such as this one to educate my self about BBQ. One thing I'm concerned about is that my smoke vault leaks significant amounts of smoke through the front door. Others have had similar experiences, but others seem not to have that problem. Still others have apparently modified their smoke vaults to reduce leakage.
Any advice on what I might need to do? Is it a matter of opening up my top vent more? Should I look into putting some kind of seal around the door? Should I not worry about it?
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