I wanted to cook a chicken but knowing it'd only take about 2 hours I didn't want to fill the coal basket full. I decided to try blocking half of it with fire brick, filling one side with charcoal and lighting as usual. It worked perfectly. You can probably see in the pic I used a little lump mixed in with the briquettes. I lit 34 briquettes and dumped over the top of what you see in the pic.
I was able to get the same temperature I'm use to getting and even though I only used half the coal I still had some left over. The chicken turned out delicious! !
Here it is going on and then a finished pic.
I also wanted to ramp up the temperature the last 10-15 minutes to get a crispy skin. I did this (below) which brought the temp to 350.....chech out the awesome logo Noah puts on cookers for military vets! Thanks Noah! He also donates $5 to the charity Folds of Honor when one of the military logos is ordered.
By the way, I have a couple weber kettles. If i have unburned coal left when my cooks are complete on the PBC, I will get a
heavy leather glove and remove the coal basket placing it in one of my kettles with all the vents closed. This shuts the coals down very quickly and allows everything to cool off so I can put it all away shortly after cooking.