My neighbor gave me a Sportsmen’s Smoker. I ordered the extra grill thing to get the briquets up off the pan floor a bit. Downloaded the instructions, seasoned the grill as per, etc etc. Even got a nifty chicken cooker rack thing to stand 'em up.
I’ve used it twice. I can never get it hot enough to show the “ideal” temp setting, though I suspect that on a warm summer day it might. I went through nearly a whole sack of briquets to cook one chicken last weekend. After five and a half hours, I finally finished it in the oven, because I couldn’t get the inner temp up to correct zone.
The food tastes fine, in fact excellent. But it took forever to cook..
I start it fairly warm (not near frozen). I use boiling water to begin with in the drip pan. I waited until the briquets were white ash ready. I kept the single vent hole open from ash buildup. I have a whole pile of apple clippins for flavor and they work great.
Anybody have any tips for getting the heat up to the ideal setting? What am I missing? I experimented with leaving the little door a bit open, hoping it would vent like a woodstove and get hotter. But open slightly or closed, I couldn’t get the heat up… I understand that it’s a slow cooker, but this is ridiculous.
I don’t have this particular brand, but one thing I ($$$$) learned last fall was that the thermostat should be as close to the food as possible.
The one I use is this:
Note that the thermostat is up near the top of the smoker (grill) section… it turns out that the heat up there is about 50-75 degrees cooler up there, compared to the temp. at the grill level - even though it’s only 6-8 inches, that distance can make a big difference.
I found a website forum specifically for the brand of smoker that I bought, and one of the most rvisited topics was “How to Relocate the Thermostat”.
You might want search the Net to see if Brinkmann has a similar type of forum - I wouldn’t be surprised to find that there is one, and I’d almost bet there’s a fix related to the relocation of the thermostat.
The other alternative would be to use a temp. sensor (the wireless kind are pretty good) where the temp. nearest to the grill can be monitored.
Last fall I smoked a 12 # turkey, and because of the temperature difference, I went more than an hour beyond what I should have in preparing it. The fire box was REALLY hot - so the problem clearly wasn’t there… I kept chasing the temperature from a high of 325 to a low of 150 almost all through the smoking process… what a pain! Turns out the problem was all in where the thermostat is located.
One other thing I use (and the pros I’ve learned from swear by this) is to use hardwood lump charcoal, rather than Kingsford briquettes and the like… they don’t burn nearly as hot, and the lump charcoal burns hotter and lasts longer. Also, be sure if you’re using the smoker chips or lumps of wood, to soak them in water for about 30 minutes prior to putting them on the fire… flare-ups can burn through any charcoal quicker, and the heat gained is very short-term.
Like I would know anything about it. But this guy makes it sound like you are doing “water smoking”—if you always have water in the pan—and he says it takes him six hours to do a chicken because the temp doesn’t get above 100 degrees C (212F)—the temp of the steam. He didn’t say how much charcoal it took but he gives instructions for adding more. He also gives hot and cold smoking methods. It all sounds like it would be too much to bear. Good luck though. http://www.smokeysplace.co.uk/water%20smoking%20food.htm
Thanks for answers. Yeah, I have the first pictured and it does use the water pan between the fire.
When I went to carve the chicken, I was amazed at how much clear fluid was still in the bird. It really was delicious but just took too long. It did not dry out in the least.
I am going to try some different kind of charcoal. I got the feeling that barbecue briquets aren’t quite dynamic enough. I bet the kind you mentioned might work better.
The one problem I already see is that loading pre-readied charcoal is hard through the little door. You also have ash build up which is unsolvable with the little Brinkmann model. I can see that getting a fancier rig would help.
Anyway, I am all for it. It seems like a great thing to do while I am stuck at home on weekends doing house stuff anyway. I just would like to speed it up a little.
We had a Brinkmann’s for a while (got it about 18 years back, used it until we beat it up during a move).
We really what it did, especially for chicken (you can do several at a time, too!), but what worked best was to light the fire just after breakfast so we could have smoked meat for dinner.
On the plus side, if you’ve got a patio or other non-flammable surface to set it on you can set it up and go about your day, just checking in to see if it needs more charcoal or water every couple of hours.
Hmm - I should see how much it would take to fix ours.
Well, I guess what I am not sure about is whether it matters that the “Ideal” temperature setting is reached. I mean, if it just reads low and this is the reality of using the thing, fine. But I wondered if I was doing something wrong. Like I said, trying a new, and perhaps fresher charcoal might bring up the heat a bit. Though they never got wet per se, I understand that briquets absorb moisture and these had been kickin around since last Fall.
If you are saying that you have a dial that says “Ideal” but the needle is pointing to “Low”, then I would get a thermometer and put it by the meat as I think someone mentioned. If that thermometer says 212 degrees, then you know the temperature is correct for water-smoking (smoking with a pan of water). The temperature will never go higher than 212 with a pan of water in there. The water will be simmering, making steam, and the steam is what is cooking the meat. It the temp was significantly higher than 212 that would mean that the water had evaporated away. If the temp was lower, then the fire isn’t adequate to keep the water simmering. Not saying better charcoal wouldn’t help keep the fire going or something, but I’d really want to know what the temp was before I tried out too many ideas. If you know the temperature with certainty, then you will be in charge of the smoker, the smoker won’t be in charge of you.
Yes, the water boils mostly when it’s near ideal, but that was only for a limited periods of time. I couldn’t keep it hot enough and, having filled the whole pan with briquets, kept the single hold vent clear and all, it just wasn’t doing it. I think that maybe the pan needs more vents than the single hole, like a Weber or something and the ash builds up too much and you are unable to clear it because the whole assembly is on top of the firepan.. Might be time to get out the drill.
What I also wondered was whether the little door, actually lowers or raises the temp. I mean, it seems like it would give the fire more oxygen but also, more smoke and heat escapes.
I think my smoker is the budget-doesn’t-really-work-that-great- version.
You know, after reading around on the Internet, I really don’t think I know what I’m talking about. This article looks like quite a good explanation, with photos (some quite dramatic) of different smokers, situations, etc. I think it might answer your questions. One thing somewhere else I read said that you don’t want the water to boil because the meat will be steamed instead of smoked. But they said the temp was around 220, so how could the water not boil? Another website talked about the danger of letting the water tray go dry—that makes more sense to me. Your smoker might be just fine, the article does talk about controlling the rate of combustion with vents and stuff. Here it is: http://forums.egullet.org/index.php?showtopic=28501
I know. My mouth had those little pains shooting through it when I saw that picture.
Weeks, my husband said that the smoker could get over 212 even with water in it because probably not all the heat is going toward making the water into steam. I think the temperature mentioned in the article is in the 220’s or something like that. But the water does absorb enough energy (which goes into making the steam) so that the temperature of the smoker stays relatively low compared to grilling at 400 degrees. Just wanted to correct that----the water helps keep the temp lower, but the temp could get somewhat higher than the boiling point of water. I do think, though, that the water should be simmering—it would have to be at 220 or whatever. So it does sound as though you were having trouble keeping it hot enough. I bet figuring out the vents is the key—and getting a thermometer so you can observe the effect of what you do. The guy in the article says it takes about 15 minutes for anything you do to show a result. Don’t drill any holes yet—don’t do anything irreversible !
What is all that black stuff on the surface of the meat? That is the kind of surface you would get if the meat was on fire, or is it merely lamp black from all the smoke?
It is a lot of trouble. That’s why god made Kansas City, that those of us who do not wish to exert ourselves might still get our allotted portion of nicely smoked mammal without going through the travail and wailing and gnashing of teeth that Weeks is now experiencing. There is something about the confluence of the Kansas and Missouri rivers that produces great BBQ anywhere within about a 50-mile radius.
Smoked BBQ it is – none of that braised stuff, crusty with spices, like you get in Memphis, or that sour, vinegary crap they serve up in North Carolina, or that accellerant-laced gristle Texas tries to pass off on the unsuspecting and naive, no sir, but real smoked BBQ ribs, with crispy ends, and beef sammidges, and barbequed pork pig and gallons of sauce.
And in Kansas City, they do not engage in the heathen practice of putting the cole slaw right there on the pork pig sandwich, as is done by some benighted cultures. If god had meant for there to be vegetables on that sandwich, he would not have made pork pig out of meat.
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