yardbirds keep me up

Come on you CS020 and 025 smokers. I can't be the only one that has had this thought. One of you had to have packed the little box full.There has got to be enough room for the smoke to go around 8 whole chickens.

Oh no, chickens in newspaper .78/lb. What poped in my head,smoking,smoking,smoking, There has to be something wrong with me??? No it"s almost New Years Eve and that would work great for a small gathering, pull straight of the bones have a few drinks,play cards,few more drinks, and then look at them backbones that I thought their wasn't enough meat to mess with.

Oh ya, the paper said freash whole frying chickens hope not shot full of salt.

I don't own an 020 but I used to have a Smokette (008) and now have an 055.

I think the general rule doesn't really depend on what smoker you have... it's more about HOW you load it up. You want air and smoke to flow easily so you want to space your product out to allow for that. And not overload it to the point where airflow is cut off.

In my view, moisture should never be a problem in a CS other than trying to make jerky where you may want more drying than it normally would allow.

My $.02

I have learned some lessons on my brining bucket,8 max unless I would spatchcock them.I was able to get my brine to 35* in 4 hrs without frig. These process is still being worked on.

Now the problem of making sure my birds get the proper amount of smoke? There is all kinds of room on the top,but the lower shelve may be a little tight in height. I thought about putting bottom birds facing down and looking at door,then put top birds facing up and looking at the sides(18 inches is a lot of room). I wonder if the top birds will cook slower since they have breasts facing up??

Oh yea I still haven't been able to get to dept store to get more probes, this maybe is the biggest problem. I could use any thoughts from someone on my concerns!

Considering the heat is coming from the bottom, the low rack of birds will take on most of the heat and therefore less heat will reach the top rack of birds. The exact temperature drop is hard to quess; you could use an oven therm to help evaluate this. I used the Mav-OT3BBQ during my Christmas ribeye cook to monitor the oven temp on the top rack. The temp drop I saw varied by up to 30 degrees; the pan I used probably blocked more heat than the birds will. If you only have a single meat probe I'd go with probing a bottom bird and either rotating the shelves about halfway thru the cook; or you could cook 'till the bottom birds are to temp then remove them and transfer the probe to a top rack bird and continue to monitor them until done. For cooking this many brids on 2 shelves I highly recommend 2 meat therms (one for each shelf). Of course there are also the temp ranges from front, back, left and right. Always probe each bird to ensure it's done.

Hope this makes sense.

db

Cal, poultry raises the humidity level in the smoker and you probably won't get the birds that you want. It's best to go a little under rather than over capacity with chickens.

Thanks guys,
This really had a couple of things that I wanted to accomplish. I was able to map out my smoker wih a full load, that was very interesting as far as telling front to back, side to side, and of course top to bottom. I did think about that moisture and wish I had dumpped it at some point and will next New Years Day. I was wondering when everyone thought this would be ok??? I will let it rip next time, Didn't know why 300* was on my 020, but it will be used next time it is loaded with chickens.

As far as the load size there was plenty of room and still be able to get the smoke around everthing.