Some thoughts on charcoal & wood burning:
And, keep in mind, I've only used a Ranch once, rented for burgers & dawgs & WSM's a couple times......
This is an excerpt from another post:
(see the red hi-lites below)
The intro I put up in "Introduce" forum had a pic of this cook ~~>
Six shoulders on 5 kettles, including two on a standard & 1 on an 18-1/2", as I wanted to see if it would act the same as a regular size kettle....
It went fine but a bit harder to keep UP TO temp part of the time .....
Here's the sets ~~>
Maple with Wicked lump, heliocopter vents....
Stubb's briquettes with pecan chunks, daisy wheel vents...
Both types of coal,with aged black walnut, new style vents...
Very early the next AM, abt 250°
This is the 18-1/2", running at about 275° ~ note open vents below, this is when I'm rampimg up the heat a little a bit later into the morning...
Total cook time was approx 13-1/2 to 14 hrs.
Checked at about 45 min into the cook to make sure everyone's going to behave, once in the middle of the night (don't need a Maverick or a Guru, the dawgs wake me up to check, they know I'll want to know if things are OK...) Again at 7:30 AM & split one chimney of lump among them to keep all going smoothly, done approx 10:30 ~ 11:00.....
Slept thru most of it......
That's the long answer, the short answer is no babysitting, kettles are just not like offsets.....
The way I think about this is I'm not controlling the burn so much with the vents (available air) as it is with available fuel....
There's only a small area of fuel set up to burn & while you do have to pay attention to the vents, it's not as important as getting a good setup on the coal / wood at the start......
6 or 7 or 8 coals produces roughly 235 ~ 240°, if the vents are mostly open & it's left to settle in,
so if that 6~8 coals are all that's burning along the line at a time, there's where your temp is.....
It has run amok before, & I ended up doing hot & fast butts, even though I didn't really want to
The two I did last night went swell, but actually burned all the way around the ring & I added maybe 1/4 circumference to where the burn would have stopped.
This works really good & I've heard of people doing 18 hour cooks like this, although I don't have their specifics.....
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Now, that being said, the Ranch is much larger & a Jim Minion method works a bit different on a WSM or the like & an offset may also hold some clues........
One thing I've seen people say that makes sense with an offset & also other cookers is to have your fire start opposite the intake vents & burn back toward them........keep that in mind, although it doesn't weigh in as much cooking on a kettle that's basically round, it is a small slice of the pie......
I see people's load ups for WSM's & UDS barrel baskets where they load up a bunch of charcoal, with wood chunks interspersed throughout & then dump a small amount of lit coals on top or in an indentation in the pile.....fire is burning BACK DOWN toward the intake vents.........
then, what do you do?
Adjust airflow so that just enough of the coals are burning to get to your target temp.....time after time I've seen people fairly new to running an UDS & even some WSM people say: "It got away from me & I had a heckuva time getting the temp back down!!!"
There's a great dissertation by the Mod over on Smoke Ring about how to fire, then close vents as you reach temp plateaus, bringing an UDS up to cooking level......hit a temp, close a vent, hit another, close a vent......etc.........so you come up underneath the target temp & can then play with the fine tuning........
Same general thing I'll do with a 22" kettle, but the closing of vents has much more to do with the ambient temps, i.e. weather conditions, than the actual heating of the cooking chamber: See the red hi-lites up above............the amount of fuel set up is primary, the amount of air is secondary......in the case of the larger cooking area & sheer cubic volume of the Ranch, my guess would be that those two variables will be CLOSER together in importance........
If you were to use a seemingly thick pile like you've shown ( seems heavy to me anyway) think about it a bit more like the Minion method type thing for the WSM/ UDS burns, keeping in mind also where the burn STARTS (the burn toward the vent thing)........so, in that case, perhaps starting off with a goody amount of lit coals & crimping vents as the temp comes up, until you're at or near where you'd like........
The other basic direction that could be taken is to thin out the coal pack, start with less lit coal & "run even".........not really sure how many exactly to stack up & exactly how many lit, but I would
guess it may be roughly 1.75 times the amount of a 22-1/2"............
One other thought comes from watching people use big offsets that have a lot of metal to heat......flamethrower !!!!
Maybe heat the general interior area, gently, with a torch, then fire up......that way it's not taking up a whole bunch of fuel just to heat the extra open spaces & metal..................
IIRC correctly, the Ranch has 3-wheel bottom vents & one centered at the top, right?
One Touch Platinum has an OTP (imagine that!) & may have some insight as to how a centered vent may be a little different....I see you Ranchers talking about crimping the exhaust to help control things......may be because the flow is more rapid going straight up?
I would also think in terms of WHERE you set up the coals in relation to the intakes; I think about this every time I use a 3-wheeler & even sometimes with the helicopter vents.......am I using most of two vents, or am I closer to the 'odd vent out'?
Setting up either way, the mental motif I use is taking a basketball down court:
Slow moving, setting up a strategy, dribble air more slowly over the lit area of coals......faster moving (higher heat cook), up the forward movement & tempo of the dribble.....fast break: do up some steaks !!!!
All the above may be bullshit, so take it for what you can use & file the rest away for future reference......
One more thing I found:
Check out phillyc0wb0y's posts.......
http://weberkettleclub.com/forums/food-pr0n/fun-with-the-ranch-kettle/msg33183/#msg33183http://weberkettleclub.com/forums/food-pr0n/rk-seafood-feast/msg37948/#msg37948http://weberkettleclub.com/forums/weber-kettles-accessories/ranch-kettle-owners-thread-showoff/msg82949/#msg82949This guy knows how to run a Ranch.....seems to me.......