Great mod for using lump charcoal!

[quadcam]

JUst came up with an idea to help out both the smokenator and the weber when using lump charcoal.

I have used lump and charcoal and found that charcoal was easier to use with the smokenator as lots of the pieces of lump are small and end up falling through the lower grate before they are fully used up. But.....I really love the flavor that lump gives to your cooking.....and my wife REALLY hates the bitterness that charcoal imparts in comparison. SO>.....................

I went out and bought a second charcoal grate for my Weber 22" grille. then, I placed the second grate 90 degrees to the original grate. This creates a grid effect for the lower charcoal grate thereby making it much harder for the small pieces of lump to fall below the charcoal grate and into the ash catcher!

Now, to make this work with the smokenator, I knew that I was going to have to make some relief cuts in the new top layer of the double decker charcoal grate. WHat I ended up doing was welding the 2 grates together (basically about 40 tack welds all the way around the perimeter.) Then, I cut out the entire section (on the upper deck) directly above between the 5th and 6th grate bars of the lower deck.

I'll post of a pic later to show what I am talking about. Very simple and very effective modification!

[quadcam]

here are some quick pics. Sorry for the mess....just finished smoking a "bacon explosion." talk about fantastic!!!

As you can see in the pics, the double layer charcoal grates really hold the lump charcoal in theur better. You can see a few small pieces left in the smokenator that would have normally fallen through long ago.

[jsperk]

Nice mod.How long of burns do you get with lump charcoal and do you have less ash by using lump?Could you post a pic of the charcoal grate only.I wanted to see the cut out section.

Thanks

[quadcam]

lump burns faster than charcoal, but there is almost no ash! the ash you see at the top of my smokenator is from the hickory lumps that were sitting on top of round openings in the smokenator.

for example, a filled up smokenator will only last about 3.5 hours for me, but........

I also have to get my lid temps up to 300 to maintain a 225-250 grate temperature. So, my fire is definately hotter than the 240 lid temps recommended in the smokenator manual. Others who live in high humidity areas have reported the same thing about having to get a hotter fire in their smokenators, too. So, I can't really tell you how long a full load would last if I wer able to keep my fire at a lower temp.