More Smoker Mods

I am working on the Smoker again.  Need to get the temperature down so I can do slow smoking.  There are wide clearances and plenty of holes in the main box, so I needed to try and fill them first.  I am using spare hardware to fill round holes.

 I am doing this to help control the air that can flow into the main box to oxidize the fire.  We limit the airflow to the fire to regulate the temperature.  The holes are only part of the problem.  There are still large linear openings around the periphery of the lid that I have to deal with.

There was a very large hole (3/4 inch) at the bottom of the main box which is supposed to be a fat drain.  well' that system never worked very good, and rusted out anyway.  So, I plugged that hole with some 1/2 inch hardware and flat washers.  In the last test I was only able to bring the temperature down to 335 degrees Fahrenheit.  When I plugged all the air holes I was able to bring the temperature down to 240 degrees Fahrenheit.  This is a significant difference, and you can see it in the result.

This is a seven pound Porx Butt that I had in the main box for about 6 hours.  It is very smoky, but still under done.  You can tell by the texture of the meat, as it is still firm.  I still have some more tuning to do on the smoker.  I let the Porx braise in a slow oven (200 degrees Fahrenheit) for another 10 hours and it was just about perfect.  There needs to be really slow and consistent heat to do Porx Butts.  It needs to be like a slow cooker, like a Crockpot, but with the Hickory Fire which makes it Nomlishous...

So, after all that work I wasn't really looking to do anything fancy.  Here is some Porx and Beans, with Barbeque Sauce.  Oh, yeah, there is some Habanero Sauce on the side there.  Simple, Hot, Nomlishous...