Pork shoulder low and slow

[WMT]

Finaly had some time to try out my homemade slow n sear today on a pork shoulder in my new master touch. The shoulder turned out great but I have to say there was a bit more playing around with the dampers than what I was expecting. It wasn't as user freindly as my UDS. But then again, this is my first low and slow with the kettle. I tried to keep my temps around the 225-230 mark but they wouldn't stay that low. I made a couple marks on the damper handle area so I knew exacty when the damper was completely closed and fully open, so I had a bit of an "benchmark" were the damper was sitting, but the temps kept jumping up to around the 275-280 mark. As they climbed I would slightly close the intake bit by bit to try and drop the temps. In between each attempt I waited 15-20 minutes for the temps to stablize but I couldn't get them to stabalize very good. Not sure what was going on. I was using royal oak birquets and they seem to have alot of ash that doesn't drop through the charcoal grate. It almost looks like the birquets are just ashed over but when I went to grab them with a set of tongs they were just ash and fell apart. Below is the set up I used.



Heres a shot part way through the cook

[Jammato]

looks good
Like your dam method, I think it is a little wide to keep temps so low, try it next time with a constant width so the coal amount lits stay stable

[WMT]

It's funny you say that about the width, because that crossed my mind also. I might have to do a mod on it because it is pretty wide in the middle. Next time I try it I will Put an arched peice of metal next to the water resivoir so the width is more constant throughout the arch as it burns. Something like in the crude "paint" skills in the picture below.

[WMT]

Thought I'd give my home built slow and sear another try before I get to modifying it. Glad I did. I gave it the ultimate low and slow test.....brisket. I set the kettle up exactly the same way I did the first time in the pictures above. The only things I did differently were 1-no water in the water pan.  2- I used 15 lit briquettes and just bumped them on top of the unlit ones. 3- used KBB instead of royal oak. I gotta say I was extremely impressed this time. The kettle found its sweet spot at 250-260 (which was fine with me as I like cooking at that temp as apposed to the lower 225ish) and chugged along for the whole 9 hour cooK. I had noticed the temp slowing starting to drop around the 6 hour mark and found a lot of ash build up in the sns basket but a quick stir with some tongs and a few sweeps of the one touch and the temperature settled right back in. I was thinking of using the snake method for this cook but I'm glad I decided to give this another go. My UDS operates extremely well by just dumping 15 lit coals on top of the basket so I thought I would try the same here. To be honest I didn't think it was going to work but to my surprise. Once the brisket was done I added a few more briquettes on top of the left overs an opened up the intake and exhaust and cooked some potatoes while the brisket rested for a bit. Out of the things I changed I think it was the lighting method and the KBB that made the difference. Always did have a problem with temperature swings with the royal oak. Here's a picture of the final product. Sorry I didn't get any pictures of setup but it was exactly the same as in the post above except I just dumped the lit briquettes on top instead of piling them in the one corner

Just put on



Three hours in


Finished product




Sent from my iPhone using Weber Kettle Club mobile app