From everything I've read if your charcoal basket is large enough these will go 20 hours or more. My basket can hold 20 pounds plus another 5 pounds of chunked wood. I may even make a smaller basket once I get his thing dialed in. But I'm just learning so there's that...
I've never had to reload and I do long smokes on brisket. If the basket is big enough 20 hours is easy. I don't even monitor the temp much. It rarely ever changes once you get it figured out. Mine likes to run around 240-260 but 275-300 can happen easily if it's opened up.
So I just let the mutts out and checked the smoker. It was at 225 after my last check 3.5 hours ago. Ball valve wide open, all others closed, pretty good I'd say. I'm not sure if having a wider basket and filling it only halfway makes a difference over having a narrower basket and filling it fully? Hopefully I can get some meat on this guy soon. Probably do a shoulder or a fatty for my first smoke on the UDS, both are pretty forgiving.
Got a couple more trinkets put on today. Thermometer, a grommet for my probes and my BBQ pig sign. Gotta find some handles for the sides and probably gonna change out the top handle also. Want to build a side table and possibly put it on casters. Oh and the most important thing, I gotta cook something in this thing!!! Hopefully Friday.
Friday for sure. #1 Ground beef stuffed with stuffed Hungarian hot peppers. #2 Maple breakfast sausage, maple BBQ rub, honey ham and provolone. Both snuggled in a nice warm bacon blanket!
Ribs and a fatty. My birthday and I'm running around cooking like a crazy person, good thing I enjoy it so much. Smoker worked great. Only ran away from me once when I was adjusting the rack height and had to have the lid open for too long, got up to 375 but came back to 275 within 15 minutes.
Breakfast anyone? Sumbitch really put up a fight getting through the stall. Stalled at 160 for over 6 hours, 17 hour total cook time between 230-250. 10.5# shoulder. Think I'm gonna have some pork and eggs!!!
