Hey everyone, long time no post. It's been a reallllly long time since my last post, so I'll re-introduce myself. My name is Danny, and I've had my PBC going on 2 years now.
First, let me say that I love this little cooker and usually love the food that comes off of it.
But, I've had a couple incidents lately where the meat I was hanging has actually put out the coals to the point that they started putting out really dirty smoke that affected the flavor of the food.
The first time it happened I had 3 chickens hanging and thought maybe I just overloaded the cooker and the grease dripping off the birds was too much for the coals, but the last time it happened was with a single rack of St Louis spares. They cooked fine for about 3 hours then I looked out and saw thick black smoke pouring out. The side of the coal basket that wasn't under the meat was burned down to ash, and the coals under the ribs were nearly out. After I left the lid off for about 10 seconds they all burst into flames, but by that point the ribs were pretty much ruined by the bad smoke.
Has anybody else had this issue, and if so, do you have any suggestions?
The 2 cooks were about a month apart, and used 2 different brands of charcoal, one Stubbs and the other Kingsford. Both were lit with the chimney method from the PBC video. Usually the PBC is super predictable, which makes a botched cook even more frutstrating.
Thanks everybody!