Burn rate for an Oil Drum sized smoker

[SR-71 Blackbird]

Hi guys,

I did my first slow cooking attempt on Sunday at it worked really well. I was doing the 2.5kg slab of ribs that I talked about before. I watched the BBQ Pit Boys video on youtube for a 2 hour cook as I did not have enough charcoal for a real low and slow. I grilled them for about 8 mins on each side and then moved them so they were being heated indirectly, the drum temperature was around 225 f for most of the two hours and I used about 2 kgs of my own home made lumpwood charcoal (yes I am that cool ). In the video they said to cook it at 300-325 but I could not get that temperature without dumping all my coal in at the same time which I was not prepared to do.

My question is quite a geeky one,

How many kgs per hour would you guess or know from personal experience that a 55 gallon oil drum size smoker would burn? How many kgs in a hour, or another way round is how many kgs do you use for the whole process and how many hours is that and I can work it out.

I tried the minion method and it seemed to work quite well, maintaining a pretty good temperature if a little low throughout. I am thinking that I just need to up the burn rate and I will get a higher temperature.
I will upload some photos when I get the chance and can figure out how to do it.

Any responses/thoughts you guys have are welcome

Thank you all

[JEC]

I can't comment on burn rate for a UDS however I can say that if you require a higher temperature using the minion method then you need to start with more lit, try dumping a full lit chimney on top. There is a limit however after which the minion will not give you what you need

[Swindon_Ed]

2hrs @ 300f won't be long enough, you want to try cooking lower for longer with a rack of ribs. I'd recomend cooking between 225f-250f and follow the 3-2-1 method and you'll get much better results.

With fuel usage, each cooker is different as materials, build quality, size & style all make a difference then you take outdoor conditions it makes it impossible to calculate you just have to go from experience. i belive some of th guys using offset smokers use about a chimney stack of charcoal every couple of hours, which you get around 1.5kgs per load.

Also what type of thermometer are you using? If you have a standard bi-metal thermometer it will most likely be wrong. (The ones in my WSM & ProQ are both 30f out) if you are able to remove the thermometer boil some water in a pan and stick the probe end of your thermometer in. if it is correct you should get a reading of 212f. Doing this will allow you to know how far out your thermometer is and allow you to compensate for this with your temp' control.

[SR-71 Blackbird]

Hi Ed,

Ok yes I need to calibrate the temperature gauge to see how similar/different it is. Ok so you said roughly 1.5kg per hours so it looks like it burns between 0.5-1kg per hour of charcoal. Very interesting, thank you.

I have also decided to use a thermocouple to measure the actual temperature the ribs are experiencing, its a k type thermocouple and I just place it next to the meat and then the sensor wire travels out to the the handheld device for my reading.

Maybe I will do some more this weekend.

Thanks guys

[Divemaster]

I've found that I can get a full 15-20 hour burn on roughly 12-15 pounds (5.5-7 kg) of lump.

As to your question of the temperature, where are you taking the temp from? If it's from the side of the grate, it can be 25-35*f lower than the actual temperature at the center of the grate on a UDS.