The wood-fired Stick Burner is the most challenging type of pit to control. It also is often the novice's first pit. This is a bad combination. As we learned in How Wood Burns, restricting combustion air is an easy way to control pit temperature but doing so will degrade smoke quality. Unfortunately, the Stick Burner's only controls - the inlet and/or outlet damper - do just that, and it's left to the pit boss to learn the fire management techniques that keep smoke and temperature in-line simultaneously. The common thinking error is to take a "log-forward" approach instead of a "meat-back" one.
The log-forward approach starts with logs, commonly available in 18" and 24" lengths, and usually split as little as the supplier can get away with. Big logs must mean less frequent tending, which seems good. This leads us to buy a pit with a big firebox, 20" or 24" square. Now we need a fire. Since we can't make a fire with one log, we arrange three to provide some decent geometry that will trap enough heat to sustain a flame. And this is where our problems begin - three big logs, fully crowned with flame (to burn the smoke), produce way more power than most backyard pits need. So we reduce the power by throttling air and black, bitter, creosote-covered meat is the result. Uncle Ralph swears it's the best he's ever eaten, but you're not so sure - Ralph's "authentic, charcoal-grilled" burgers always tasted a bit like lighter fluid ...
Meat-back thinking starts with the product and works back to the log. How big a fire do we need to raise our 4' long pit to 230F with 60 lbs of cold meat in it? No calculator exists, but a hot, compact, well-oxygenated fire the size of a shoebox will surely do it. And if that fire is going to have three or four logs in it, they've got to be pretty small. And that means we're going to be adding small logs more frequently, instead of big ones less so. The #1 cause of bad barbecue in backyard-sized stick burners is oversized logs - get out your chainsaw and splitting maul and your product will improve dramatically. The pellet cooker is meat-back thinking taken to its extreme: tiny logs added very frequently, controlled hot geometry, lots of air, and a fire the size of a coffee cup.
Stick Burners can and do make great barbecue, but not without a lot of effort from an experienced and knowledgeable pit boss. For that reason, they are viewed by some as the most "real" type of barbecue pit.
