Well you've got yourself a "stick burner" and charcoal while being great to start with is not the best fuel for your cooker, it's wood that she craves!:wink:
Here's my fire starting and maintenance method that can be tweaked to fit pretty much any offset, I hope it will help you a little!:grin:
STARTING A FIRE IN AN OFFSET
The best way to run your offset is to build a good, hot wood fire and develop a thick bed of coals to thoroughly heat the pit. Leave the exhaust dampers wide open and adjust the temps with your intake damper. Here's my fire building method...
Open the doors and all of the dampers to the pit. Start with an 8 to 10 lb bag of LUMP charcoal, filling a chimney with about half to light and pour the rest into the firebox. When your chimney is thoroughly lit, pour the lit coals on to the mound of unlit coals in the firebox, put a couple of wood splits on top and allow them to burn down to begin generating more coals. When the wood splits have fully ignited and are ashed over, shut the doors and leave the dampers fully open to allow plenty of draft as the pit heats up.
Once the temp climbs to about 25 degrees or so above where you want to cook at, begin adjusting down on the intake damper until you have dialed in your cooking temp and then once the first two splits have sufficiently burned down to coals add another wood split to begin a routine of a split every 45 minutes to an hour. This way you are constantly adding to the coal bed and your temps are staying pretty much consistent. As long as you add your splits when they are needed your pit will practically run itself and though there will be SOME fluctuation in temps when opening the firebox door and when the newly added split catches on, the pit will recover very quickly, you'll be cooking in a ZONE.
If you want to cook at 275 for instance, work to maintain a zone of 50 degrees and maintain the temp in an area between 250 and 300. The temp will fall to between 250 and 275 when the pit is ready for another split and then the temp will rise to between 275 and 300 as the split ignites but eventually the temp will settle in to the 275 that you have the intake damper set for. Again, as long as you're adding your splits regularly your pit will pretty much be on auto pilot and you'll never have to worry about losing your temps or dirty smoke.:wink:
P.S. Again, it's important to make all temp adjustments with your INTAKE damper only, the exhaust should remain wide open throughout the cook.:grin:
