WSM first use - struggling with temperature

[Pompey Dinlo]

Received my new WSM 47 yesterday and decided to try it out this afternoon to cook a chicken. I started the fire at about 1.15 pm using a weber chimney starter poured onto a pile of unlit coals once they started turning grey (I used a whole 3kg bag of Weber Long Lasting briquettes in all) and initially had the water bowl in place filled less than a 1/4 with cold water. A medium chunk of hickory went on followed by a spatchcocked chicken on the top grill. All vents were opened fully.

After an hour the temperature had barely got above 50oC so I removed the water bowl, kept the vents fully open and waited. The temperature slowly started to creep up but as of 4.30 it's only reached 110oC. I was aiming to have the chicken ready for 6 but at this rate it's going to have to go in the oven.

Any advice?

[BRUN]

Put boiling water in the water pan not cold, might help a bit, but it should be hot enough by now anyway if you still had it in there. Mine arrived today hopefully I don't have the same problem.

How are the coals looking ?

[BRUN]

Is your thermometer calibrated ?

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[Pompey Dinlo]

Is your thermometer calibrated ?

Sent from my Nexus 4 using Tapatalk

Do I need to? I would have assumed for a pricey bit of kit I wouldn't need to.

Anyway, I took it out at 5.30 pm and it was cooked quite nicely so I needn't have worried too much.

[AlanL]

Dinlo, like you I'm new to WSM having only got mine a couple of weeks back and manged two smokes so far. I've not found keeping temp too much trouble.

What I've done each time:
Put 1 chimney worth of unlit Weber Briquettes in base pan
Lit 1/2 chimney briquettes and waited until reasonable well greyed about 20/25 mins
Spread the lit briquettes over the unlit ones
added the middle section
filled the water bowl approx 4 litres of water
Assembled rest of wsm
All bottom vents set to fully open
got to temp within 5 mins
set all vents to 1/2 and I then left for 15 minutes to ensure temp stabilized with limits before adding meat.
Top vent left open all the time through out smoke.

I probably only used a 1/3 of a 10kg bag of briquettes for each 6-7 hour smoke and there was briquettes left in the pan at the end once fire extinguished.

I've kept a log each time recording the temp every 30 mins. Logs can be found in a couple of posts in this section. I 've sited by smoker in a fairly sheltered location, I try not to adjust the vents too much and if I do only very subtlety. As long as it's in the smoking range I was told not to play around and trust the WSM to do it's job.

I did a lot of reading on here and the Virtual Bullet before doing my first smoke.

I hope this is of some help.

Give it another go the WSM is great fun.

[AlanL]

I meant to say in the first smoke I used a couple of kettle of boiling water in the pan as I had seen that recommended on a site. Second time I used cold water and didn't find it made much difference.

[Pompey Dinlo]

Thanks Alan,

I did everything that you did so I'm impressed that you got up to temperature so quickly. My WSM was sited on my patio which is flanked by a low wall and side of the house and there wasn't much of a breeze yesterday, does it need a strong flow of air to work properly?

[robgunby]

Air circulation is necessary but you don't want a strong breeze.

I suspect you aren't putting enough lit charcoal in there. I dunno how big your fire basket is but you might wanna try dumping a whole lit chimney in there instead of half.

[AlanL]

Dinlo, if you've not seen this already have a look here http://www.virtualweberbullet.com/tipsfaq.html

Some very useful stuff specific to the WSM.

[Pompey Dinlo]

Dinlo, if you've not seen this already have a look here http://www.virtualweberbullet.com/tipsfaq.html

Some very useful stuff specific to the WSM.

Thanks Alan, great site!