British BBQ Society Forums

hello all,

gave my wsm its first cook yesterday - 2 racks of ribs using minion and 3-2-1. huge success, great tasting tender as you like ribs (maybe too tender actually, i would have preferred a bit of chew).

however, i had a bit of a temp problem which i'm hoping someone could help with.

i got up to 225, but had huge difficulty maintaining it there, every time i closed bottom vents to anything like 1/3 open the temp dropped to 200 mark, so throughout the cook i had all 3 vents practically wide open which from what i understand is not normal. i used bookers restaurant lump started with a chimney of smaller lump.

any advice gratefully received.

cheers

gareth

Could be several reasons for this, off the top of my head I would suggest not enough lit charcoal for your minion, I typically use 1/2 a chimney in the summer and a whole chimney in the winter, did you use water, if so was it hot? Also I have found the new WSM pan on the 47cm model to be too large to be filled right to the top, around half full gives better results (i.e. temps in the right range). I have had similar results with my WSM and have pretty much ditched the water pan for all but frozen rib cooks, I now use a 34cm clay saucer from Homebase. I'm sure that you had the top vent fully open for the cook

JEC wrote:Could be several reasons for this, off the top of my head I would suggest not enough lit charcoal for your minion, I typically use 1/2 a chimney in the summer and a whole chimney in the winter, did you use water, if so was it hot? Also I have found the new WSM pan on the 47cm model to be too large to be filled right to the top, around half full gives better results (i.e. temps in the right range). I have had similar results with my WSM and have pretty much ditched the water pan for all but frozen rib cooks, I now use a 34cm clay saucer from Homebase. I'm sure that you had the top vent fully open for the cook

good call - thanks! i used far less water and left the fuel in the chimney that bit longer, and it held steady at 250 for the full 6 hours (except a drop to 220 when the heavens opened)