Chasing a clean smoke ring cost me 9 hours of sleep

Saturday I fired up the offset at 5am for a pork butt and a brisket. Couldn't get the fire to settle below 300 for almost 3 hours. Kept messing with the intake, the stack, even repositioned the water pan twice. Finally called my buddy who runs a comp team and he said to check the gasket on the firebox door. Sure enough, it was frayed and letting in way too much air. Patched it with some high temp tape and it dropped to 250 in 20 minutes. Wasted most of the morning and the brisket still came out a bit drier than I like. Anyone else had a simple part like a gasket make them feel like an idiot for hours?

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1 Comment

vera64212d ago

Figure out what your temps were actually doing in the smoker before you patched that gasket, because the gasket might not be the whole story. I've had the same thing happen and found out my cheap digital thermometer was reading 30 degrees high the whole time, so I was chasing a problem that didn't really exist. The dry brisket makes me wonder if you were fighting the temp swings by opening the lid too often, which dries things out way more than a steady 275 would. Next time, tape the gasket, but also set a probe in a cup of water next to the meat to double check what your smoker is actually telling you. That dry bite might be from your own panic, not the firebox, if you catch my drift. Take this with a grain of salt though, every smoker is a little different and I've been wrong plenty of times.