Heat up time vs cook time

[starship]

I have been cooking ribs on a ducane grill, 225 for 5 hours. Now I have a OBS, It's taking a long time to come up to 225 (3 full racks of ribs) Do I start my time when it gets to 225? Thats 2 hours already. 

[NePaSmoKer]

I have been cooking ribs on a ducane grill, 225 for 5 hours. Now I have a OBS, It's taking a long time to come up to 225 (3 full racks of ribs) Do I start my time when it gets to 225? Thats 2 hours already. 

starship

here is a link to ribs in a Brdley

http://www.susanminor.org/forums/showthread.php?t=449

nepas

[starship]

Thanks for the responce. The information in the link is good.  I started my ribs (well, see the link in  my sig)  I use a dry rub, after removing the membrane and treating with olive oil. They were in the fridge all night. 

I can't see pre-heating the OBS, cause when we open it, we loose a lot of heat?  But from cold iron it's been 2 hours and only at 170.

I am hoping to be able to load and forget!  Do you pre-heat your OBS before loading?

[starship]

OK, my bad.

I did not read recipie booklet as I had my own rub. Pre-heat then load.

[pensrock]

I have a BDS and always pre-heat. I also have a number of bricks in the bottom around the water bowl. These get hot during the pre-heat and help with the recovery after opening the door. I also pre-heat hotter than I plan to smoke/cook at. If I want 200* I'll pre-heat at 225* or so.

[starship]

Thanks,

What kind of bricks?

[pensrock]

I think you could probably use about any kind, as long as they are clean and no contaniments on them.  We build industrial furnaces where I work so I have fire brick and small scrap pieces of cut brick.

[starship]

What about lava rocks?  Do / Would they retain heat also?

[West Coast Kansan]

I use an oversized catch pan.  Forget what size but the grocery store has cheap foil pans that fit real nice in the Bradley.  They hold about 4 times or more water than the origional water bowl.

I start out hot smokes with one of these pans pretty full of hot water.  It speeds preheat time and gives up heat real well to smooth recovery time.

I was going to add another heat element for recovery time - but my big pan of hot water helped enough it seems just fine to me now.

I do still preheat.

[pensrock]

The reason I put bricks in was because that is what I had, I do not think it would matter what you use as long as its clean and does not put off any oder of contaniments as its heated. Its only there to store heat. I think anything that will hold heat would work fine. You could probably use sidewalk bricks if they were clean or pick up a few small fire bricks at a hardware for coal/wood stoves. The lava rock would probably work fine but might be difficult to keep in place. I'll post a pic of mine below so you can see what I did.

[macattak]

I use whatever is cheap at the big box home improvement store.  I also have some veneer brick along the back.

[Gizmo]

I preheat to 260 before loading and try to minimize the time the door is open when loading.  If you have used your smoker for a while, check on how wide the vents are spread apart.  They tend to get pinched together when scrubbed and reduce the heat flow.  I use a non-stick pot scraper to widen them back up.  If you want to see how fast the bradley heats up, take the Vtray out and see how fast it will get up to temp.  DO NOT OPERATE WITHOUT THE VTRAY.  This is only to demonstrate the temperature flow.  Sometimes I leave the VTRAY out during some of the preheat just to get the top of the unit warmed up. O.K. it is really because I forgot to wash off the tray during the last smoke or I just feel the need to clean it.

[pensrock]

Good point, if you look at my V-Tray you can clearly see I opened the vents up quite a bit for better heat flow.

[FLBentRider]

I use regular lowes bricks, triple wrapped in foil.