first smoke complete

[mnsmoker]

WOW!!!!! Am I impressed I only saw temp swings of 3-4 degrees that with the stock unit no mods or auber controller. For most of the 5 hour smoke it went from 226-223 it went to 219 only once and 228 once not bad right out the gate. I gave up checking on it after 3 hours and went out and blew a foot of snow of the driveway came back in 2 hours later..........226 man that's awesome. Now for the product. Pretty decent for the first run. Used to much wood and my rub is not quite right for that type of smoker but the ribs are good just acouple of tweaks. oh yeah the pan of beans came out spectacular. Saturday doing 2 8lb. pork butts . 225 for 12 hours should be close cant wait to see if I get that same type of temp control. All in all could not be happier with my #2!!!!!!!!

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[DiggingDogFarm]

That's great!

[DivotMaker]

Congrats, Jim!  Great to have that first one under your belt!  Were the ribs moist? 

[mnsmoker]

yeah the ribs were pretty darn good moist good color done just right. I've done hundeds of racks on my other smokers so I'm just always looking for perfection. I used 2 of the 3 inch dowls and I should have just used 1 and my rub needs some tweaking but really impressed for the first smoke!!!!

[DivotMaker]

Sounds good, Jim!  One thing a lot of us do is actually weigh our wood.  It can be deceiving, sometimes.  I actually tried to figure out the dowels, and came up with .64 oz per inch (this could vary slightly, depending on the density).  So, about 4" total would have been plenty.  I use 2.5-3 oz on ribs, and it's perfect for my crew.

Lots of good rubs in the recipes sections here.  One of my favorite "store bought" rubs for pork is Famous Dave's Rib Rub.  I know, cooler to make your own, but this stuff is easy and pretty darn tasty.  Give it a try sometime, if you haven't.

I look forward to your future successes!  Maybe this winter will end someday, and everyone will be smoking more!  Way to go hardcore in a blizzard!

[swthorpe]

Glad to hear the ribs were a success, Jim!    For the butts, though, I would allow more like 16 hours rather than 12, especially at 225F.   My experience with BB at 225F has been 2 hours per pound to get to an IT of 200.

[Three Sons BBQ]

SWTHORPE ... You are right... I tried a few smokes even lower than 225 and it took forever.

The issue is with these the temp setting is accurate... So it took me a bit to get calibrated to the accuracy.