PongGod please provide details of what you do before starting your cook. Is it a full and level basket of coals? Is it Kingsford charcoal? And if you can take a picture of your air shutter position and post it here.
Being you are at sea level that shutter should be nearly closed IMHO.
Also how are you storing your charcoal? Did it possibly get wet? Might be a bad batch of charcoal.
Are you finding unburned coals or does everything burn up?
Here is a picture of my bed of coals before I start...
That is after 20 minutes and lighting with Kingsford lighter fluid. A full bed all white hot but very little flame. You can really feel the heat from a bed of coals like this. You can also see the position of the air shutter in that picture. I am at around 1,200 ft elevation where I live.
A bed like that will give me 8 hours of cooking temps.
Hi, muebe, and thanks for chiming in. The first time I prepared to cook, I closed the damper slightly because I thought it was closer to half open than 1/4 open (incidentally that was the time I had my best brisket result). I since opened it back up to approximately its original position, but I'm thinking maybe I should close it to 1/4 again (even though Amber told me over the phone that she thought this would make relatively little difference).
I keep my charcoal bag in the garage so I'm sure it hasn't gotten wet since I bought it. I'm not aware of charcoal ever being "bad", but I suppose it's conceivable. BTW, it is not Kingsford, it's B&B, an all-natural briquette, presumably similar to Kingsford Competition. I suppose I should probably give the standard Kingsford a try just to eliminate another variable, but the idea that this cooker will only work effectively with a particular brand of charcoal would disappointing to say the least.
After six hours of cooking, if I don't add any more coals, they're pretty well burned out. This may be another hint that closing the damper slightly will give me a longer quality burn. I don't have a photo to show you, but compared to yours, I can tell you that my basket looks more full and maybe not quite as completely ashed over as yours.
This really is a learning process and I guess the price you pay for having a "set it and forget it" system is that you have to do everything just right and you have little margin for error. My consistent failure to get the meat hot enough quickly enough naturally makes me assume the solution is to make the fuel burn hotter, so it still seems somewhat counter-intuitive when the experts tell me that's not so. But, I'm willing to try whatever I need to try to make this thing work.
- Robert -
