Problems Cooking on the UDS

backbay2

New member
Ok the first cook was two chickens and a chuck roast, pablano peppers portabella mushrooms, and some apples cored and cinammon/sugar coated...... Problem was the drum was cooking way to fast and the chuck roast came off way to early

I think I put the meat on too soon with out letting the drum dial in...... Yet all my external gauges read around 230ish
as soon as I pulled the chuck the temp rose 50 degrees immediatley and stayed there. When i pulled the two chickens the temp jumped to about 320 or so and stayed there??

Next cook was a brisket....

Temp was around 230 to 240 when i put the meat on... I still think I did not let the drum dial in long enough
An 8lb brisket cooked only 6 hours and I left the house for about an hour and the wind kicked up and the drum fired up and finished the brisket for me while I was gone. I was aiming for low and slow and got a hot and fast cook. I had wrapped the brisket at 170ish. It was not too tough and the flavor was spot on but the brisket was very dry. I was aiming for 200 internal on the flat and pulled it at 212 because I showed up too late. The damage was done... i made burnt ends next out of the point but had no idea how long to actually let them cook......

Any pointers????
 

jimsbarbecue

Moderator
Staff member
As with any cooker, they all have a learning curve. Wind can be troublesome . If it is blowing at the vents it is like a turbo charger stoking the fire. If you know the wind is going to blow a wind break helps. When you take the lid off . Think back draft. Your not going to experience one . Just with the lid off the pit gets a lot of air for the fire and temps go up. Most think having the lid off let's the heat out and lowers temps. Sometimes the heat can go down with the lid off but normally not.
 

Nafle

New member
I used the Igrill first time just to monitor The temp. I recon that the heat dropped rapidly when The lid came of. And rised right after, but leveled out after 10 - 15 minutes.


www.naflebbq.blogspot.no

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backbay2

New member
I realize that the heat will rise with the lid off and back on, usually it is a temporary spike, what I am seeing is temp dying when the meat is put on and then drum temp spiking when the meat is taken off, that is after letting the drum settle the temps are still high. i did my first dry run (no meat) and temps stayed consistant for 16hours varying only 20degrees up and back down. But i have yet to find that consistency with meat on the pit..... I think i may not be letting the temp dial in long enough before putting the meat on, on the trial run I was not in a hurry to cook..
 

sheepdad

New member
The thing about a drum is that once the coals get raging, be it with wind thru the vents or taking the lid off for a length of time beyond normal, its hard to tone down the heat. I'm not saying that just taking the lid off for a short time to do a temp check or a meat turn or whatever is going to make your temps go really high. On mine my temps go down then back up a little higher than what i was cooking at. I just choke the vents a little until i see the start of the temp decreasing ( 2 or 3 °) and then adjust the vents back to my sweet spot. The drum does a real good job maintaining a running temp so choking the air supply does the trick. Now this can take 5 minutes or an hour depending on how stoked the coals got so you have to pay attention and try to adjust cook times the best you can.

One thing i like to do on a long cook is to use a baffle to even out the heat though out the cooking grate. I use a water pan in the middle as a buffer and it does a great job evening out the heat which can be as much as a 50° difference between the center of the grate and the edge. This is where a temp probe set up in the center comes in handy. I use a Maverick 732 which lets me see both grate and food temps. Then the drum thermo lets me see the side temps. Big Poppa has these available online in the store.

As far as not letting the fire settle in at the start... Yes.. That too. I did that a couple of times myself

Good Luck and let us know how you make out


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MrAdam

New member
You might be starting too many coals at the beginning of the cook as well. How full is your chimney when you fire it up?

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Big Poppa

Administrator
Thisnk stopping a semi truck.... anticipate....you just need to undershoot your temps for awhile and watch....I never touch my top vents but usually midway through a long cook at about the three hour mark the coals avre very happy and temp to bump up a bit i choke down the vent to mayby a quarters width opening and then shut the top vents about halfway and within about 15 minutes it is minding it manners...your issues seem to be that the fire is getting away from you but in a semi controlled manner....
 

Big Poppa

Administrator
ONe other thing about our drum..the engineers but the two vents on the same side of the drum...I looked at the prototype and said "what are you guys thinking" They said " Wind, Boss" They then showed me temp graphs that showed there to be no difference in a calm day between on the same side and opposing sides...I sort of thought that if you wanted even heat that you would have to have air comin in from a balanced point....so always turn your vents away from the wind on the bps kit unless you want a wild and wooly cook
 

backbay2

New member
Ok........just an FYI not only am I new to DRUM SMOKING I am new to smoking in general, before this drum I have not smoked anything and so hours and hours of research trying to get this right.......... Thanks for the help!!!
 

MrAdam

New member
Ok........just an FYI not only am I new to DRUM SMOKING I am new to smoking in general, before this drum I have not smoked anything and so hours and hours of research trying to get this right.......... Thanks for the help!!!

Make sure to read Meathead's site www.amazingribs.com from cover to cover. There are tons of great reviews techniques and recipes there.

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southga

New member
when you open the lid, you are letting a lot of oxygen into what had been a controlled environment. I close my intakes completely for 5-10 minutes before opening the lid. This burns off most of the oxygen inside the drum. When you open & the drum gets a big gulp of air, the spike is not as severe. I leave the intakes closed until I see the temps begin to drop then return them to where I had them set before. I do this even if I am using my PartyQ. I'll close the vent & turn off the PartyQ until I am ready to open the intakes back up.
 

scooter

Moderator
Staff member
That is a great idea and sounds plausible. Closing the vents should also help keep the ash from flying up when lifting the lid a little too fast.
 

Motay

New member
Mr Adam posed a question to backbay that wasn't answered, "how many briquettes did you use?" I used an entire chimney in my test burn which gave me a really high temp setting. Then I read someone's post about starting off with 12-15 coals nested in the middle of my lump, which is what I did on my first real cook on Thanksgiving day. It dialed in like a champ at 185 and never wavered from it. It also happened to be 38 degrees out that morning, which may have had something to do with it. But I was very happy with the results.
 

backbay2

New member
Mr Adam posed a question to backbay that wasn't answered, "how many briquettes did you use?" I used an entire chimney in my test burn which gave me a really high temp setting. Then I read someone's post about starting off with 12-15 coals nested in the middle of my lump, which is what I did on my first real cook on Thanksgiving day. It dialed in like a champ at 185 and never wavered from it. It also happened to be 38 degrees out that morning, which may have had something to do with it. But I was very happy with the results.

I believe scooter did a test and starts out with 20 or so briquettes........... I have to look and find it, but I keep it there so that I always start the same.... With that said, I am only on my third cook and my fourth run on the drum, so I am practicing with the air and other things first before I change the amount of briquettes. I would like to keep one variable the same for now........... Thanks for the input
 

sheepdad

New member
I believe scooter did a test and starts out with 20 or so briquettes........... I have to look and find it, but I keep it there so that I always start the same.... With that said, I am only on my third cook and my fourth run on the drum, so I am practicing with the air and other things first before I change the amount of briquettes. I would like to keep one variable the same for now........... Thanks for the input

Good plan. I do the same thing. One of the few things you can keep constant unless you count out the # of briquettes in the basket too.:p Not sure what good that would do anyway in terms of cook temp using the minion method.

On my Thanksgiving cook. I remember wanting to kick up the heat from 260 to 275 during the last half of the cook. I had the vents at 3 and 1 (# of vents open on the left and # on the right) rolling steady at 260 and opened them up to 4 and 3 to give it a boost. What I have been doing is waiting for a 3 or 4 deg jump in temp then choke it by half of what I opened it up to which would be 3 1/2 and 2. Well it took about 15 minutes to get that 3 deg temp spike. I wasn't until the breeze changed that the coals started to stoke. After the initial spike and after choking the vents like I said, the drum climbed then rolled along at 278 for the rest of the cook. Usually my vent changes result in some sorta of a rise in temp within 1-5 minutes. This time something was different and I'm thinking it might have been the way the briquettes were laying AND the wind or lack of. Whatever it was, I was fun to get a challenge during the cook and overcome it. It don't happen often, but I like when I can beat the BBQ Karma gods when they throw me a slow curve ball.
 
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