I need advice: I have an Amerique and this weekend I decided to smoke 4 pork butts and 2 briskets. They actually fit very well in the Amerique. (The weather was warm and a little humid, but this is Colorado) I brined the pork butts for 36 hours and I injected one of the briskets with Butcher BBQ Marinade. Early Sunday morning, I drained and prepped all of the meat with a spicy rub and put it in the smoker by 6:00AM. I set the probe to 190 and the cooking temp at 250, I was going to try a higher cook temp for once (I usually put the meat on the night before and cook at 225. I checked the meat at 10:30 and the cook temp was at 200. I cranked up the cooking temp to 275 and waited an hour...still 204. I opened the door and a huge cloud of steam came out. The meat was steaning, with no bark, this was about noon. I waited another hour and the temp still had not moved. The probe was showing about 155 in a pork butt.
I decided to foil the meat and take it inside to my ovens to get it done in a reasonable time.
I have never had this happen before and I have done about 8 cooks, several with this much meat. I wondered if something was wrong with the cooker, so I tried to bring the temp up with the empty cabinet. This worked very well, I got to 275 easily. I tried putting the probe in a potato and starting over, again no issue bringing the temp up to 275.
I looked for clues, the drip pan was amost full with drippings and I had trimmed most of the meat well, it appeared to be mostly water, not grease.
I am postulating that the brined and injected meat gave up most of the liquid which turned to steam which kept the temp down around 200.
The questions is: How do I prevent this? Is this too much meat for the Amerique? Do I dry the meat out more before I start cooking and lose some of the brine? Do I open the door often to let out steam? Do I cook slower, and longer?
The meat tasted wonderful, pulled well, just no bark. I realize that an Amerique is designed to be a moist smoker, but in this case, it was too moist. I also have a friend that has experienced this with a Model 50 and got discouraged enough to quit using it and went back to his custom stick burner.
I have been thinking about this phenomena, this would also explain some of the cook time issues that people have, a steam cloud has to be dried out before temperatures will increase. Meat with higher moisture content will take longer to dry out, quit producing steam and allow the temp to rise.
I was trying to approach some of the temps that the stick burner guys use to see if I could complete a smoke in the daylight.
Any thoughts or advice to help mitigate this? I do not want to quit brining or injecting, the difference in the flavor is immense.
Regards,
Bill
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