Hey Gang,
I recently picked up a performer gold off craigslist for $60 (go me). Before my score I have been cooking/smoking on my 18.5" kettle. I had that thing down cold, I could cook anything I wanted (if there was room) any way I wanted it. I love that little thing.
But times they are a changin' so I upgraded to the performer and was sooo excited to start cooking with it. The first thing I tried was baby back ribs, these are my favorite thing to cook, and now since I had the room, I was going to do three slabs for a get together. With my little kettle, I used the minion method, with a pan of water underneath. The temp (from a thermo stuck through the top vent) would hold at 250 degrees. After mopping the ribs once an hour, they were always perfect after 3 hours. Every. Single. Time.
I fired up the performer with the same minion method and drip pans as my previous set up, and it held 250 degrees (on the lid thermo) beautifully. But after the first hour, I could already tell that the ribs weren't progressing well, but I didn't want to over react. I let them go for three hours, and could tell they weren't even close to done. I let them go almost to four hours and pulled them off because it was time to eat. Not even close to done, edible, but chewy, stuck to bone, embarrassing....
Yesterday I decided I was going to redeem myself be smoking a small brisket. Here in SoCal most grocery stores have these little 2-3 pound briskets that are perfect to make a couple sandwiches for my wife and I for dinner. I have done them several times on the little kettle and came out good every time before. But after 3 hours on the performer I checked the internal temp and it was barely 110 degrees! What the heck!?!? The thermo on the lid was a rock solid 250 degrees the entire time. What gives!?!?
I ended up pulling the brisket off and finishing it in the oven, it did have about an 1/8 inch smoke ring and ended up being edible, but I am concerned I won't get this figured out. Have any of you guys encountered this problem? Am I doing something wrong? Maybe I should go back to the minor leagues with my 18.5".....