lower vent setting

[mattchee]

Hey all,

Just got my smokenator, and I'm itching to get going with it. I have a question, though. In my instructions, I was a little unclear about the lower vent setting. First it says to set it at 3/8" but right after that it says that they usually just leave it all they way open. I would like to do all my adjustments with the top vent. What do you all recommend for my lower vent setting. This would be for the most basic smoking (not running dry or anything).

I have a one touch silver.

Any advice woukd be appreciated. Thanks.

[jerkylips]

In my experience, you'll have better luck controlling temp with the lower vent & keeping the top vent wide open. If you close down the top vent, you run the risk of holding the smoke in too long & getting soot. Control the airflow TO the coals & keep the top vent open.

I would start with the bottom vent closed off quite a bit & gradually open it up til your temp comes up. I've found that if you have it too open at the beginning & your temp gets up too high, it takes a while to get it to come back down.

[mattchee]

Thanks for the tip, jerkylips. That actually makes a lot of sense about the airflow in lower vent vs holding smoke in with the top vent.

I'm hoping to get a chance to test it out this weekend, I'll let you know how it goes.

[mattchee]

WELL, I had planned to do my test run (with ribs) on Sunday, but the day had other plans for me... so, I decided to race home from work yesterday and get the smokenator going (yep, for an 11pm dinner!).

Everything went as smooth as could be, however I ended up leaving the lower vents open. Here's why: I had trouble initially getting the temperature up, so I ended up opening the lower vent all the way open - at that point, I found it pretty difficult to adjust the lower vent simply because it's a pain in the neck to see. So, going forward I went with adjusting the top vent.

Once I was up to temp, threw the ribs on, I tweaked the upper vent a little bit periodically for the first hour or so, but from then on, I was able to maintain a rock solid 250 dome temp for the rest of my smoke, with only minor tweaks here and there, getting it regulated after servicing the coals/water pan (I really need to get a therm to monitor the grill, but from what I've read about the temp gradient, 250 should have put me in the right area, and it worked out well).

So, I had two racks of st louis cut pork ribs, smoked them for 4 hours and they came out FANTASTIC. I've never smoked anyting before, and this is probably the tastiest thing I've ever made (and this is only the beginning!). Definitely happy with the way they turned out. My family, who were nice enough to stay up for such a late dinner on a week night, really loved the ribs (and I think they were being honest).

Let's see if I cant get a pic (or pics) up here...


Above: This is at about 3 hours.


Here they are at 4 hours, off the grill.



The smoke ring was more pronounced in person - These were taken with my phone, and the lighting in my kitchen is poor, so the flash washed it out a bit I think....

[i2eaper]

Is the pan under the ribs on the grill full of water or just to catch the juice from the ribs? If for water, why go this route vs. the water pan included with the smokenator? I have read on here a larger water pan makes it easier to maintain temps.

[mattchee]

The pan under the ribs is just to catch the juices. This was my only time using the smokenator, but even when I cook plain old indirect on my weber, I throw a pan under whatever I'm cooking. I love pork fat as much as the next guy, but I don't love cleaning up that crap caked all over the bottom of my kettle!

As far as it helping regulate the temp if I had put water in it, I have no idea. Not enough experience here. I seemed to do fine with just the supplied water pan. I do have another tip though:

I put a fifty fifty mix of water and apple juice in the pan, for flavor (in theory). Then at the end, I thought, I'd just let the pan boil off and clean up in the morning. BAD idea. The WATER boiled off but all the sugar from the juice remained, bubbled up on to some kind of foam, and then burned to a crisp. What I had in the morning was a pan with a loaf of burnt sugar that took me an hour or so to clean. It was gnarly. Avoid this. Either take the pan out, or avoid putting apple juice (or anything with sugar) in there all together. I also noticed other places that caught condensation were sticky in the morning (most notably the thermometer). I might be a bit of a clean freak though. But for anyone, I would definitely avoid letting juice bUrn off in the pan!