Big K briquettes - burn time

[CHokKA]

Hi everyone

Last weekend I did two long-ish cooks (over 2 hours) and to do so used a chimney starter full of Big K briquettes. I did them on my Weber MasterTouch 57cm, vents fully open at the bottom and on top. What I wanted to ask is about the burn time of the briquettes. Alot of people here seem to be able to get a good number of hours on them, but for me using the indirect method with the vents fully open the briquettes were losing their potency after about an hour and a half. I kept having to shift them around to try and get a bit more heat. I was cooking two pork loins and two beef foreribs (it's worth mentioning that I have two MasterTouch 57cm's so I operated them both at the same time).

So my question is, should I be operating the Weber with the bottom vents fully open on a shorter indirect cook, or is having them fully open the norm? I just can't see that I'd ever be able to get 6+ hours out of Big K briquettes like some have mentioned they've got after this weekend. What am I doing wrong?

[YetiDave]

What kind of temperature were you cooking at with those vents fully open? I'd guess you were looking at well over 400F, certainly far too high for low and slow. Sounds like something is off

[CHokKA]

What kind of temperature were you cooking at with those vents fully open? I'd guess you were looking at well over 400F, certainly far too high for low and slow. Sounds like something is off

Hi YetiDave

I wasn't going for low and slow with those cuts, I was aiming at a maximum of two-hour cook time over indirect heat but it took longer than I expected as the coals started to fizzle out after about an hour and a half. The temp I was aiming for would have been around 200C (so close to 400F) similar to a normal oven cook for those types of meat. I used a full chimney starter of charcoal briquettes but they just didn't seem to keep the heat or last well at all. Should I maybe have aimed to reduce the temperate to about 180C by closing the vents a little, would that have helped the burn time for the briquettes. I'm just concerned because I want to smoke on my ProQ Excel but if the Big K briquettes are going to give me under 3 hours of burn time I'll be topping it up alot on something like a pork butt.

[Tiny]

Hello chum,
As I understand it you stuck an single chimney in the beast and then ran it with all the taps open? I reckon you would have been cooking at well over 400 deg and I would have been amazed if you would have got longer than 2 hours.

If I am lo and slo ing then its half a chimney of lit probably an chimney and a half to 2 chimneys of unlit and that gets me 8 hours on an weber.

Think the fuel has done exactly what I would have expected with the set up and qty you describe, cleverer folk than me might come back but I think not enough coals and too hot to expect much more,
Cheers
Tiny

[CHokKA]

Hey Tiny

Cheers for the post. From what you say it sounds like what I experienced is roughly par for the fuel and method I used. I just wanted to make sure I wasn't doing something wrong

[JEC]

This seems fairly typical with this set-up based on my experience in a Weber kettle

[RobinC]

Not used Big K briquettes myself but both Heat Beads and Weber briquettes start losing some of their heat after 2 hours but can maintain a good temp for in the region of 3 - 4 hours so long as you don't keep opening the lid.

You can keep a high heat fire going for longer by adding more fuel to it. With something like weber briquettes I would start adding a handful of unlit fuel every 30 mins after an hour and a half.