Counting Briquettes

How to get the right temperature in your Smoker or Grill?

Imagine the knob you turn on your stove/cooker, you know from 1 to 9, to get the right heat when cooking in your kitchen. Now imagine that the Number of Briquettes is the same thing as the dial on the knob.

The exact number of briquettes will determine the temperature you get in your Smoker/Grill!

In my WSM for getting temperature of 120c (240F) I use 34 Weber Briquettes + 20 ”Minion”.

Ok so what’s Minion? Minion comes from Jim Minion who came up with the idea of having lit briquettes lighting unlit ones. This way prolonging the fire.

So what I do is fill my Chimney Starter with 34 unlit Weber Briquettes.

Then light them up in the bottom of my WSM.

When the starter is lit and it is time for pouring it in I scatter 20 unlit briquettes around the bottom of the

Chimney Starter, then pour in the lit ones, trying to have both lit and unlit touching each other.

This way I get 120c (240F) for over four hours.

In my Weber 57cm Grill I use 20 Weber Briquettes to achieve 175c (350F) and use 25 Weber Br. to achieve 200c (400F) for two hours.

When running my Offset Smoker I first put 20 unlit Weber Briquettes in the firebox, then pour an absolute Full Chimney Starter with lit briquettes over those. After 2 hours another Full Chimney Starter with lit briquettes etc.

So remember! Dial in your favourite temperature by Counting Briquettes!