Running out of charcoal

[Crotonmark]

Your ring should easily last you longer than 6 hours. I would recommend the following:
- Check to make sure your lid is not out of shape
- Use a pizza stone, fire bricks, or sand instead of water for thermal mass
- Try to keep the lid closed as much as possible

My lid is fine. The lid is not all closed due to the wires for the maverick.
I was hoping to get 12 hours from a snake. Really hard to get more charcoal in

 

[Fwismoker]

I'm predicting a UDS by 3 to 1.

If a UDS can smoke food much better than a kettle "grill" then sure why not?

There's certainly no rule that says it has to be one or the other. If i didn't have my Big Poppa that does both then I'd smoke on a UDS and sear/grill on a kettle.

 

[1buckie]

"The lid is not all closed due to the wires for the maverick. "


That's a little bit of it anyways.....

Standard burn for me is about 10~11+ hours....two, with one or sometimes two, with wood chunks, with some small otherwise useless lump chips sprinkled on top of the outside edge of the chain....against the bell.....
Like so :

Top vent all open, always (pinched in some rare circumstances, but not usually long cooks) bottom vents anywhere from half open on down to just a little open, depending on :

~outside air temp
~desired cooking temp
~type of charcoal actually used
~outside humidity, rain, etc.
~bigness of meat (that's a biggie, sometimes)

But like this set....it just trundled along @ 260 or so....

Burned around, so just added in another length of coals.....only takes a minute or two, doesn't have to be perfect & finishes the cookup just fine....

Sometimes, it just runs straight thru with no adding in.......depends on if I get around to checking where the vents are set or not...

9 hours straight thru :

On at 9:30 PM........
......off at 6:30 AM

^^^^ That's a common sight at the Kettle Orphanage here.....

After the kettle's heated, 5~6 coals SHOULD produce about 240f thru the area......so it's possible you're losing some from the wires....usually i wouldn't think that's much of a deal, but maybe....?

lifting the lid a lot goofs things up, even though it will recover quickly..............

 

[Crotonmark]

What do you do to add charcoal? Take the grill top with the meat off and out the charcoal on?

 

[1buckie]

End, going into the rest :