wood box

Check out the "Smoke" thread in the Beginners forum from about a week ago. There is a discussion of this topic there.

Richard

I have burned some wood in my day and, amazingly, putting just a few ping pong ball-sized pieces of wood into the cookshack is all you need for an entire cook. Ribs, butt or brisket... smoking for 12 or 14 hours, just put the wood in at the start and that's it. I hear that the meat only "takes" smoke til it reaches 140 internal, anyway, so maybe that's why...

Woodburner
Smokering is produced intil the internal temp reaches 140� but smoke flavor is added until there is no more smoke produce. The smoke flavor is deposited on the exterior of the meat during the whole cook if you apply it that long.
In log burners that why you see techniques like cooking in brown paperbags and foiling to cut down the amount of smoke that is applied and a bitter end product.
Jim

In my limited experience, I also have been using "pingpong" size pieces of wood - they weigh in at 1.5-2oz. Usually within a couple hours, they have burned completely to grey ash. Smoke tends to really roll out for about the 2nd half hour of cooking, then settles down.

BUT, unless you like really really smokey food, I can't imagine a problem with not getting enough smoke flavor. CS seems to be extremely efficient at getting smoke into food, probably because there's not much airflow thru the oven, especially when the heat is cycled off. Even after the wood's well burned up, there's still sort of a cloud of smoke inside. The limited airflow keeps the humidity up, too.

It would be interesting to see if anyone's done airflow measurements to compare CS with offset or water smoker or other less tightly sealed electrics.

thanks everyone,I guess it really is trial and error everyones tastes are differant for sure.My concern was if it could really be left alone for a long cook, after all on a sunny sunday you want to be watching the ball game and enjoying the party having a brew and enjoy some good q with little fuss.