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The brisket at a joint outside Lockhart taught me more about fire management than any class
I stopped at a small place off Highway 183 near Lockhart last month and stood by the pit for about 40 minutes just watching the guy work. He was running a 1,000 gallon offset and never once checked the meat with a thermometer, he just held his hand over the stack and moved coals around with a garden hoe. I asked him how he knew when to add wood and he said "when the smoke gets thin and blue, you got about 20 minutes before it turns white and bitter." That one line changed how I run my own stick burner at home, I used to chase temps every 15 minutes and now I just watch the color of what's coming out of the stack. He also kept a spray bottle of plain water and hit the firebox door hinges every hour, said the heat warps them over a season if you don't. I went home and checked mine and sure enough there was a quarter inch gap I never noticed. Has anyone else picked up a trick from a pitmaster just by standing there and not talking?
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avery_roberts677d ago
Watching a guy eyeball smoke color on one cook doesn't teach you fire management, it teaches you one guy's habit. Thin blue smoke sounds great until you're running a different rig in January wind with wet oak, and suddenly his 20 minute rule means nothing. That hinge trick is solid, sure, but you got lucky he wasn't the type who swears by soaking wood or mopping every 30 minutes, because then you'd have copied a bad habit just as fast. One pitmaster on one afternoon is a sample size of one, and half these old guys can't tell you why they do what they do, they just do it. Learn from five or six of them, compare notes, then decide what actually holds up on your own smoker.
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