17 minutes ago, EaglesRocker97 said:

 

Yeah, gonna use charcoal, but I usually get lump and start them in a chimney. Is that good, or would briquettes or a mix of briquettes and lumps do better here?

mixing is good. chimney is okay to start and then push it off to the side for indirect heat however you will still have to add coals here and there every few hours. chimney method is fine.

19 minutes ago, mikemack8 said:

No surprise that there are lots of experts on "smoking meat" in here

You want beef with that comment?

Just now, EaglesRocker97 said:

You want beef with that comment?

Only if it's smoked beef

@B3is the resident meat smoker here.  But he's probably easier to find on the meat smoking forums. 

6 minutes ago, HazletonEagle said:

@B3is the resident meat smoker here.  But he's probably easier to find on the meat smoking forums. 

I was banned from there twice.

1 hour ago, rambo said:

I was banned from there twice.

LEARN TO SWALLOW NEXT TIME. 

5 hours ago, EaglesRocker97 said:

 

Yeah, gonna use charcoal, but I usually get lump and start them in a chimney. Is that good, or would briquettes or a mix of briquettes and lumps do better here?

I have a little cheap drum smoker like yours, but cheaper. I never got it to work right. Thinking back on it, the snake method may not work as well as you think. I know a lot of people that use that on a kettle grill with great results, but it may not give enough heat for a drum.

Like I said, I wasn't good with it, so I could be wrong, but that's just my thoughts

1 hour ago, BFit said:

I have a little cheap drum smoker like yours, but cheaper. I never got it to work right. Thinking back on it, the snake method may not work as well as you think. I know a lot of people that use that on a kettle grill with great results, but it may not give enough heat for a drum.

Like I said, I wasn't good with it, so I could be wrong, but that's just my thoughts

Yeah, the general configuration seems like a good idea, but also made me wonder if that was enough coals. I'm thinking about widening that slightly and trying to stack a base of coals underneath to keep it going if it starts to die off. I'll talk to my dad, too, who mastered smoking sizable briskets in a smaller one (though I could see smaller being helpful in this situation). Ultimately, I'll combine and distill everyone's advice to decide how I'll go about this myself. I definitely like a nice blend of spices, so I was intrigued by what you posted earlier. I had most of them on hand, but picked up a few on the list that weren't already in my cabinet. I really appreciate the help, and I'll be sure to report the results!

1 hour ago, BFit said:

I have a little cheap drum smoker like yours, but cheaper. I never got it to work right.

coals on top, newspaper underneath, ignite all the way around (just not one side of the newspaper)

rocker, as long as you have a constant indirect heat source you're good. 

Last spring I bought a Masterbuilt gravity series 560 charcoal smoker and that thing is a boss. Easiest grill/smoker I've ever used and worth every penny of the $500 or so it cost me. 

2 hours ago, mr_irie1 said:

Last spring I bought a Masterbuilt gravity series 560 charcoal smoker and that thing is a boss. Easiest grill/smoker I've ever used and worth every penny of the $500 or so it cost me. 

I looked at those. Ended up buying this for $500 instead. I can fit a ton of food on it, and it's hard to beat a good stick burner.

On 5/26/2021 at 10:12 AM, EaglesRocker97 said:

Here's what I have to work with. I'm not a pro like @BFit, so it's not the fanciest setup, but my dad used to smoke brisket on a similar device back when they ran a concession stand, and it came out great every time. Mine's actually a little nicer than his was. I'm just worried about maintaining temperature but it has a couple airflow adjustments, one on top and one on bottom, and room for a lot of coals.

 

 

I’d go minion method on that. 

1 hour ago, 4for4EaglesNest said:

 There really isn’t, not from what I’m seeing.  

We can't all be a great as you, Richard Simmons!

20 hours ago, B3 said:

I’d go minion method on that. 

It sounds like he's just starting out though. When I first started smoking meats, I struggled with temperature control using the minion method but had much better success with the snake. Once I learned on the snake I tried minion again and didn't have any problems controlling temps. So I always suggest people start with snake when learning. 

9 hours ago, rambo said:

We can't all be a great as you, Richard Simmons!

we can with the right haircut.

 

Gentlemen, it has begun:

 

think we'll all agree, slice that fat up in 1" cross sections with a very sharp knife.

 

That minion method is definitely appealing. It seems like a pretty simple setup (at least according to this https://www.smokedbbqsource.com/how-to-fire-up-your-smoker-with-the-minion-method/) with no chance of running out of coals. The only tricky part I'm imagining is having the coals hot enough but not too hot in the chimney when you dump them in. Since you don't want a raging fire, I could see dumping in some slightly hot coals that aren't quite going well enough to stay lit and end up fizzling out early in the process, but I guess you should be able to err on the side of heat and then just completely close off the vents if you think it's burning too hot. I'm going to use lump charcoal, but I have a lot of smaller bits (actually more than I'd like in the last couple of bags), so I figure a base of smaller pieces with some lumps on top and in the middle should provide a nice bed to last awhile..

The other thing that I question is that I'd ideally want a little more wood burning than is shown here to ensure that I get a good amount of hickory flavor.




Side note: The bone-in pork butt weighed in at just over 8 lbs, so would I be looking at about 6-8 hours total? As long as I have a steady temperature going, about how long should I wait to check to see if it's close to done?

I took @BFit's advice on the rub. It smelled heavenly, and I made sure to lather it up an rub it down really well with enough left over for a pre-smoke coating tomorrow morning. I was gonna set up the coals tonight, but the weather today is garbage. It looks amenable tomorrow, though, so I'll probably pull my ass out of bed around 5/6 A.M. to get it lit by 7/8 and hopefully have it ready by 3:00. I'm excited, but nervous as hell. My preferred butcher supplies premium meats, so this feels like high stakes, lol.

Gotta say, that was a good read.

Miserable day for cooking out, especially for the first time doing this. She's smoking, but not without some difficulty. At first, the instructions seemed a little confusing and I couldn't figure out how to set up the water pan, but once I did and had the coals going perfectly, the screws on the bottom vent/ash collector fell out of the track that it's supposed to lock into, so I had a a vent full of red-hot coals detached from the smoker and no way to close off the air. It soared up over 350, and I had a little trouble getting it back down, but I was able to jury-rig a covering of tin foil and rocks to seal around the bottom prices pretty well and it's sitting pretty now at 225. It's a nice smoker but a couple of the features have the kind chinsy designs that only the Chinese would dare to use on a name-brand product, like screws with heads too small to hold a fire control in place. Luckily, American ingenuity saved the day. I burned a lot of coals in the beginning so I just had to refuel, but it was easy to introduce fresh coals and get them going quickly.

 

good thinking. if the meat was in there during the high temp, at worst you browned the outer layer slightly, more flavor possibly. 

8 hours ago, EaglesRocker97 said:

Miserable day for cooking out, especially for the first time doing this. She's smoking, but not without some difficulty. At first, the instructions seemed a little confusing and I couldn't figure out how to set up the water pan, but once I did and had the coals going perfectly, the screws on the bottom vent/ash collector fell out of the track that it's supposed to lock into, so I had a a vent full of red-hot coals detached from the smoker and no way to close off the air. It soared up over 350, and I had a little trouble getting it back down, but I was able to jury-rig a covering of tin foil and rocks to seal around the bottom prices pretty well and it's sitting pretty now at 225. It's a nice smoker but a couple of the features have the kind chinsy designs that only the Chinese would dare to use on a name-brand product, like screws with heads too small to hold a fire control in place. Luckily, American ingenuity saved the day. I burned a lot of coals in the beginning so I just had to refuel, but it was easy to introduce fresh coals and get them going quickly.

 

Let us know how you make out

1 hour ago, BFit said:

Let us know how you make out

I'm still at it, lol. The meat was hanging at 150 forever, but I got it moving finally. I'm gonna do another temp check in a few minutes here and am feeling realtively confident that I'll be pulling it off when I check. We're coming up on 11 hours.

Just now, EaglesRocker97 said:

I'm still at it, lol. The meat was hanging at 150 forever, but I got it moving finally. I'm gonna do another temp check in a few minutes here and am feeling realtively confident that I'll be pulling it off when I check. We're coming up on 11 hours.

Did you wrap it in foil at all?

 

You all have any artwork?  Here’s my favorite of ours 

 

 

it’s by Francis Speight. That’s Manayunk. St. John the Baptist Church way off in the background. We used to go to church there when we’d visit my grandparents. Brings back memories.