Smoker Mod

Well, it’s Memorial Day, so for me that means the first grill cleaning of the year, as well as an endless supply of hot dog consumption. But, today it’s been scorching hot, so once the cleaning was done, I opted for two spicy chicken sausages, and threw two racks of ribs onto the Weber Smokey Mountain. Two racks should really require little more than use of the Performer, but I wanted to try out an idea.

The 22” smoker uses a lot of charcoal, simply because of the size of the charcoal ring that holds it all. One chimney’s worth of unlit briquettes underneath another’s worth of lit ones. It can hold 200* - 250* for HOURS, but when smoking just a little bit, it’s a big waste of Kingsford. So I wondered if I used a smaller ring, would I be able to use less but still keep consistent temps? Honestly, whatever I’ve done on it before was taken off with the charcoal being about 50-60% spent. Everything else just went to waste.

Hence, my mod:

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I bought 8 little paver stones from Home Depot, at 88 cents a pop. No good old clay bricks available that day, but I may pick up one just to make the ring a bit more consistent. Either way, I figure I just saved maybe 25% of the charcoal I’d normally use. Two and a half hours in so far, and it hasn’t wavered off 250*. Sweet!