I made this barbecue mistake for years. Here's how to fix it. 

Haha well it’s hard to argue with #1 in Texas

@@MadScientistBBQ I was waiting in line for Jirby's and I had a perfect view into their fires and could see the smoke they were burning throughout the cook as I waited.. he's got it dialed down. the smoke flavor on his birsket and beef ribs was incredible

I noticed EVERYONE in the bbq community was singing the praises of aaron franklin. then I came across a podcast with Jirby as the guest, and he basically said that franklin was overrated. everyone was doing the same thing as everyone else. f#ck that. Jirby gained my respect for being different, and just being himself, and speaking his mind. and He has a video on his channel on how to build an offset smoker out of cinder blocks for less the $200😆 Jirby is legend just for staying true to himself. the quality of his food is a reflection of that

@@lobsterbisque7567 When he was starting his offset he squirted a bunch of lighter fluid in there and he said he didn't have all day to wait. I was like... I like this guy.

@@TheBradleyd1146 I prefer the flamethrower method, same principle, more fun.

I definitely wasn’t the first one to figure it out. I was wrong for years 😂

@@MadScientistBBQ When you did a collab. with Harry Soo, there was the following teaching moment, that has just come to fruition: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-xi89UCoaTl4.html

Do you know what your moisture was m trying to figure this offset out before I sell it to many cooks with no smoke flavor

Thanks!

I have kicked this idea around for a bit, I think it would be like the flavor you get from the meat dripping onto the fire. can you taste the difference ? How are you adding the tallow and how much? also are you using new tallow or are you taking it from your drippings can? @Mad Scientist BBQ please test this out!!!!!!!

Try preheating a little longer. I also saw a trick that I am about to try: bricks wrapped in foil as thermal mass in the bottom of the smoke chamber. Water pan also helps even things out.

I lived with wood heat for the first twenty years of my life. Balancing the dampers, cold air into the fire and hot smoke up the chimney, was always key to extracting heat from the wood. In the case of making heat, you don't want smoke because that means you didn't get complete combustion. But, if you whack open the air intake and the damper to clean up the smoke, all the heat goes up the chimney. With wood heat, you do want to get the chimney hot to avoid creosote and get your draft going, then throttle that back. You balance that by watching for vacuum in the firebox, if the chimney damper is closed too much there won't be any and there will be smoke leaking from the stove. When smoke is what you want, and you need a certain amount of heat, your smoke damper holds back smoke and heat. The fresh air damper controls the combustion by holding back atmospheric pressure. Obviously if this is throttled too much the fire will smoulder more, but not all smoke is good smoke. Just like distilling whisky, the first part through the condenser is no good, and the same at the end. There are things coming out that either don't result in good tastes or make for headache fuel. As your wood is burning down and smoking less intensely, you can close the smoke damper to hold back some of that good smoke, and you may see a temperature rise and smoke coming out around the door. If you close the air damper, that smoke coming from the door will stop and the fire will cool off. If the fire temperature drops too much, you will get into the smoke flavors you may not want. This is why people just say to run the smoke damper wide open, then control their fire with the fresh air. But: if you're running a clean finishing fire, your food has already absorbed all the smoke it can take and you've wrapped it up to keep it moist, closing up the smoke damper and balancing the air damper to hold the heat in the right range can really stretch out the life of a load of fuel. Especially on a smaller smoker running charcoal in the firebox.

Was going to comment the same. I started adding a lot more wood chunks lower in the chute on my Masterbuilt, right on top of the first few coals, then adding greener chunks into the ash hopper. Last brisket I did came out fantastic.

It seems to me that that is true but I think a lot more testing and 💰 has to be thrown at the problem