Drip Pan Question

[MBfrontier]

Yesterday, I smoked a pork butt in my OBS for the first time. This is the longest cooking I've done in my OBS of only a few. I'm new to cooking with a smoker. I used a larger capacity foil pan replacing the small water bowl. I planned on 4 hours of smoke so I used 12 hickory bisquettes. All went well but at the end of the cooking approx. 12 hours I noticed smoke had begun rolling out the top of the smoker again. I opened the door to find that the foil pan was dry and the spent bisquettes in the pan had reignited and were producing nasty smelling smoke. Luckily, I caught it in time because the IT of the pork butt was 194 degrees so I removed the meat and FTC'd for an hour and it turned out OK. My wife and I had a couple sandwiches after pulling and were relieved  that the meat turned out good.

My question is should I remove the drip pan from the OBS and leave it out of the smoker after the smoking portion of the cooking is complete or dump the burned bisquettes, refill with water, and place back into the smoker for the remainder of the cooking?

I am new to smoker cooking and this site and have had a few very successful experiences smoking chicken, ribs, and now a pork butt. The information on this site has been very helpful to me.

[RAF128]

Leave it in there.   Make sure there is enough water.    Besides the pucks it also catch fat that drips off of you meat.    You could dump the used pucks and then refill with water and put it back.

[3rensho]

You should dump the water pan every four hours and refill with water.  Even after the smoke is done the meat can continue to drip fat and that should drip into a pan of water.  If the pan dries out you run a risk of a fire with the re-ignited pucks and the dripping fat.

[Quarlow]

Definitely empty the drip pan once the smoke is done and refill with water or beer or wine or whatever you can think of. It will infuze flavour into your food. But the main thing is it should drip into liquid. Now that said, if you are making jerky you want to remove the liquid once the smoke is done but put the pan back in dry to catch the drips if there is any.

[MBfrontier]

Thanks for those replies. I'll dump the burnt bisquettes and refill the pan with water every couple of hours.

Best regards.

[classicrockgriller]

MB, Welcome to the Forum.

Congrats on a sucessful Butt smoke.