First Overnighter on the Backwoods FatBoy

With the long holiday weekend, I decided that I had plenty of time to pull an overnighter on the Fatboy.  So, I picked up a brisket & a pork butt and decided that I'd cook on Sunday night for the Memorial Holiday on Monday.

I loaded up the firebox about 8:30pm on Sunday evening and had the cooker read to put the meat in by 10:00pm.  I'd done a couple of long burns just to get a feel for how long the cooker would run on a single load of charcoal.  I was expecting ~8-9hrs.

The meat went on at 10:00pm and I topped off the water pan & charcoal pan around 11:30pm, then hit the rack.  I was up 5:00am to check and I was pleased to find the cooker chugging along at 250*, so I decided to grab a couple of more hours. 

At 7:00am, it was still hanging on to 250* like a bad habit.  I inserted my meat probes and was surprised to find that they were both nearly done.  I was expecting the cook to last until sometime closer to noon.  At 8:00am, the brisket went in the cooler and the butt followed at 8:45am.

I had the end of a beef tenderloin ready, so I popped it in the cooker and it's roasting now as I type this.

I'm really surprised about a couple of things:

• I'm getting a really long burn from this fire.  Longer than I'd ever hoped for.
• The meat seems to get done much quicker than I'm used to.  I'd noticed this with ribs and pork steaks also.

I'm gonna have lots of opportunites to cook this summer, so I'm glad to be getting this practice in.  Hope you have/had a wonderful Memorial Day weekend.

Cheers,
Braddog

Comments

[Chris]

I've noticed shorter cooking times in my Egg vs the offset smoker. I went back to use the offset this weekend and my standard spare ribs took 1 1/2 hours longer than same temps on the Egg.

You did get a nice long burn time for one load, that is an efficient cooker. Double insulated, right?

[Braddog]

Correct. The Fatboy (& all those Backwoods that are bigger than the Fatboy) has 2" of insulation and double wall construction. It's pretty good, but I'll never get 18+ hrs on less than a full bag of lump like I can with the BGE. But I traded that for capacity. =)

Cheers,
Braddog