" drip tray with water
Temp at or near 225 F
Added 4 chunks of soaked hickory after an hour
Sprayed with apple juice/cider "mop" every hour or so"
You would think with water,, soaked chunks & spray, there would be enough moisture available....
BBQ is different in some ways.....
The soaked chunks just seem to make the fire (coals) work harder to burn off the excess moisture, to then do what they were going to do anyway...burn.....
The water pan's fine...a lot of people do that to keep the temp inside more even & the general environment moist....I don't 'cause I roll kinda fast & sloppy & would just spill it all over gettin' in the cooker......
Spritz / spray is OK but I'll only do that once, maybe twice, if they seem like the bark/ crust is getting too dry.....
Running @225, when you open to fiddle w/ sprtizing or any other reasons, the temp is just that much slower to recoup......and Chasing's right about therm's.....you could be reading 225 & actually be @180....it's possible & they would take 19 hours at that temp.....
Pork needs to cook "x" length of time to get the fat rendered down.....backribs are not
as critical maybe as the regular flats, but still need some time...........
These are dry rub, no mustard or other fiddling, spritz once & go ~~~>
Whole regular ribs, a little different than what you're asking about, but same concept.....cooked at medium temp, 260-275 & they come out tender to the point a bread knife cut wavy thru them.....
When you get down to when it seems like they're close to done (like Aawa
says, or using Jeff's wrap method for part of the time)... use the 'bend test' to see if they're done / tender enough ~~~>
With backribs, wrapped, try 2 hours regular, 1-1/2 hrs in foil & 30~45 min. back out to set up glaze or sauce them......