A buddy of mine passed away and his wife gave me his offset smoker, since we talked barbeque so much. [I already had a Grill Dome "egg" and a gravity feed (lump charcoal) smoker].

I picked it up yesterday and made pulled pork and back ribs today. I was really surprised by how much wood it consumed. I've never had an offset before, so I have a pretty basic question.

Question for you experienced guys: What I did was put in one or two sticks of wood whenever the fire started dying down. There was quite a bit of temperature variance that way. I'd estimate that I had the vents a little less than a quarter of the way open, and the temp kind of yo-yo'd between 250-300. A coule of times it dipped to 225 when the logs were just about burnt up.

After the fact, it dawned on me that maybe I should load the firebox with a lot more wood and maybe a narrower opening in the vents would keep a steadier temp with longer intervals between adding sticks?

Thanks in advance.

I keep my wood (oak) at 6-10" long and 3" around max. I run my firebox wide open or pretty close to it. I control my heat with amount of fuel and not with amount of air. Mine burns cleaner that way. I don't know how much it uses but I toss on one to two and if they don't burst into flames when I put them on, I'm not running it hot enough or with enough air. I don't believe in using the dampers for controlling heat. That's what several "award winning" places I Houston do and their food all tastes bitter because they get crappy poorly burned smoke and tar on their food. You won't see Franklin doing that. That's just my method but every burner runs different. I can smoke on my primo for 18 hours and never need to reload. On my offset, it'll run through a lot more. Just experiment. If she burns more wood, she burns more wood.

There will be a lot of variability depending on what size offset you're using, whether it's a small Oklahoma joes from academy, heavy duty lyfe-tyme, or a 250 gallon mil scale, etc.

But in general you don't want to choke off your fire with reduced airflow, too much dirty smoke is not a good thing. What you're suggesting by loading up a ton of wood in the firebox would either restrict airflow too much, or has the potential to all light up and all of a sudden you're running a fire that's 550 degrees or more.

The main advice I can give is to first get a good coal bed established. Let some early logs burn completely down or even use just standard charcoal briquettes if you need to get started. This will help moderate temperature swings and make sure the next logs light quickly. Also, get as small of splits of wood as you can, smaller splits will make the fire easier to control. I have a 250 gallon tank as my stick burner and I still use sticks that are only 8-12 inches long and no more than 3-6 inches wide. If you're using a small offset pit, you need to be smaller than that. Finally, make sure the wood you're using is properly seasoned and don't let the logs completely die out before putting the next ones on.

Good luck with the cooks, it takes a while to learn how to cook with an offset pit, but it's a lot of fun watching/tending a fire and I'm a firm believer it puts out the best smoked product of all the bbq-ing options out there.

I had a smoker built about 15 years ago and I seemed to have the same issue you did in going through a lot of wood. My smokestack was on the top end of smoker, and I couldn't believe how much wood I used. I cut it out and plugged top then reinstalled with a 4.5 pipe elbow coming out end at grate level. Problem solved. It makes sense that heat and smoke swirls around longer inside before finding its way out the end rather than heading straight out smokestack on top. Good Luck!

I have a big trailer mounted twin fire box smoker. We put painted exhaust rain caps on each stack. Two on the fire boxes and two on the smoke stacks. We tightened the flapper bolt where it holds its position. We can nearly close them and choke down the amount of smoke going through the pit (lower heat) or open them up and raise to heat. More heat is more wood used. This is done in conjunction with the damper and stack cap on the fire box. Overnight, we will fill the boxes and leave everything barely open to maintain heat and get us 6 hours of sleep. You really need to have several different meat cooks on it to find its sweet spot and really learn the personality of the cooker.

As others have said, getting a steady fire started first will make a big difference in keeping it burning steady. I tend to start my fire with charcoal and then add wood to the coals. Once I get it burning steady (not totally choked, but not roaring flames either), mine will stay around 225-250 pretty easily for an hour or so at a time. I usually leave the firebox close to wide open and the stack is usually just less than 1/4 open.

One thing that greatly improved my ability to control the fire in mine was adding a high temperature gasket to the cooking chamber and firebox lids. I was losing a lot of smoke (and therefore heat) out around the lids and it made it difficult to control the airflow over the fire. After adding the gasket, I am much more able to keep the fire steady when adding more fuel.

No personal experience with them but know some pit makers have designed charcoal/wood baskets that are supposed to burn pretty clean and last 6+ hours.

For example: https://bbqpits.com/product/stainless-steel-charcoal-basket/

A) Preburn, until you get clean blue smoke.

B) Add wood already burning clean, not fresh. (Live oak, which died, and has sat long enough for the bark to slip tends to be OK to add without pre burning, if you did the initial burn)

C) I usually load mine quite full.

Thanks guys. I'll try finding some of the instructional videos on YouTube and will try some of these recommendations. I did start the fire with lump charcoal in a chimney, then poured it in the firebox and then added a few sticks. When it didn't catch right away, the leaf blower got it going. But I did start the meat on the grill as soon as it was up to temp the first time. I'll try starting the fire earlier next time to let it settle.

I'm not really complaining about it using so much wood as I am curious if I was doing it wrong somehow that MADE it use more than it needed to. Sounds like probably not. I knew there would be a learning curve, and I'm sure plenty of Shiner Bock (or Dos XX or Flight) will help me along that path.

Gig'em!

It could change completely based on wind speed, direction, orientation of the intake in relation to the wind, or relative humidity.

Best to just sit outside and drink beer and babysit it.

I always start with a bed of charcoal, then smaller wood. Once I get a nice stack, I can usually extend the life of the logs through positioning. Instead of putting directly on top of the pyre, I'll just lay one end in and one end in the "cold" so it burns like a wick.

Things that can help.

• Better insulating the firebox. This can be adding fire brick to the bottom and sides or a insulated welder's cloth.
• The more ability to finely tune air flow the better. Put in a small smoldering stick of wood in the fire box and watch how the smoke flows through the pit. Play with the flew and the air intake until you understand how they impact the smoker. Adding more controllable air at the intake doesn't hurt. Not having a smoke stack sized big enough and in the right location to draw only allows so many options.

Here's my take. Pellet and wood chunk smokers exist for mainly for 2 big reasons as well as some others (ease and cost of acquiring and storing pellets, space saving, etc.).

1) Time. It's a commitment to tend a real offset smoker for 6 to 14 hours and a large number of successful smokes to have learn how each pit in particular works / doesn't work in general. Before trying to cook meat, do a long burn in experiment with different sizes (length and thickness) of wood and quantities of each added at a time. You'll quickly see how much and what intervals gives a fairly stable temp control.

2) There is some art form in cooking and smoking is no exception. It takes a balance of understanding the concepts and applications as well as understanding the specific smoker. And a cook that has put in the time to learn the ends and outs of managing a fire, the smoker, and a successful cook for each type of cut of meat.

Pellet smokers make it set and forget (temp control and no reliance on tending) and have removed a decent portion of the skill needed to get a good result. Still up to the cook for meat selection, trimming, seasoning, timing, resting, etc.

An offset smoker isn't for everyone. I've met my match in pits I just couldn't cook on. They were generally someone else's and set up in a way I didn't prefer. I use a pellet smoker when my schedule doesn't allow for the offset.

As far as losing control of the temp. My biggest suggestion is to thoroughly clean, burn in, and season before trying to cook anything else. Once you do, start the fire before worrying about the meat. Whether that is charcoal base with wood on top or a torch and just wood. Pits are a lot of cold metal, moisture, and grease. Getting it up to temp (and holding) before putting on cold meat gives you a head start on controlling the temp. Once you do add the meat avoid the temptation to add more than a small stick of wood when the temp inevitably drops because of opening it and adding cold meat absorbing heat. Not doing the above is #1 way for temp to get away from you.