Massive soot

[Big Steve]

Hello Everyone,
Not sure where this should be posted within this forum but thought it was a good topic for discussion, so here it is. A friend of a friend has a large trailer mounted commercial smoker (1000# meat) revolving racks with controlled inlet air and exhaust. It's a heavily insulated offset firebox which he burns wood in. Yesterday he was doing a large cook 18 briskets, 8 pork shoulders and the pit was hardly used. I arrived to check out his machine and as I walk up to it I smell soot, heavy soot. There is black tar running out of the firebox (remember this is a offset cooker). He vented the smoker and opened the doors and the meat was black and had a sooty acid smell to it. This was at 8:30 AM. They started the cook at 10 PM and set the temp for 200 degrees. After 10 hours some of the whole pork shoulder was falling apart done, some of the briskets were poked at 197 degrees and a one was still 145. Wierd. The taste test was nasty. The rub was super salty and the bark was just acidic sooty. Should have spit it out it was that bad but didn't want to offend. We pulled some without bark and it was better but still have mild soot flavor to the smoke.
I didn't attend the event so I'm not sure what they did to recover from this. Only suggestion I had was to remove all bark and go heavy with some sweet sauce.
Now that I said all that I'll ask this. Would this warrant a complete scrubbing and steam cleaning of the pit to basically start over? How and the world can you remove that nasty smell from the cooker? What could cause such a thing? Green wood? Over filled firebox and the controller shutting off all air to drop pit temp?
500 people were attending the party and I felt sick and it wasn't even my cook. I felt for the guy for sure.

[Rodcrafter]

I have never had that same experience and glad to say I haven't. It sounds like the wood was green and full bark still on it. Bark is the only wood I see a dark smoke come from, I remove all I can as I put pieces in the FB. I wonder, how often was this rig being checked? An offset usually needs to be feed every hour or so, it makes me think they may have tried to get some sleep and loaded it way too heavy counting on the controller to tend the fire, which then almost went out and couldn't clear the air. As for the inside of the cooker, he could just pressure wash it and fire it up good and hot. Let the rascal burn for a few hours and it should be good.

jm2cw

[The Czar]

Also what kind of wood and temp was he getting? Homemade cooker?

I think RC is one to something with wood being green....it burns like crap if it's green....but I also wonder is the smoke wasn't flowing good thru the cooker? If it sits then it can get stale so to speak and off put bad smoke....


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[Pete Mazz]

I'd guess there was some pine or something similar thrown in there at some point. Maybe he loaned it to someone who didn't know?

[Clover Ridge Smokers]

I have to agree with the green wood theory. I'm willing to bet this was to source of the black tar coming from the firebox. If it were my pit, I would heat it up and pressure wash it a couple of times and reseason it.

[SmokinFF]

Being a chimney cleaner, we see heavy soot and creosote build up a lot. 2 causes, green wood and burning too cold. The soot is a product of incomplete combustion. Setting the temp at 200* and letting the cooker do the work didn't allow it to burn hot enough to burn up the nasty stuff resulting in the soot. Just my $.02. Hope the crowd was ok with the grub.

[SoloQue]

The soot is a product of incomplete combustion. Setting the temp at 200* and letting the cooker do the work didn't allow it to burn hot enough to burn up the nasty stuff resulting in the soot

If his racks were heavily coated and it was oozing from the FB then he might been cooking like this for a while as in that is his style of cooking. Sounds crazy but I know folks down here that think they aren't knocking out great Q if there isn't white smoke billowing from the stacks. They always say the love the great smokey flavor of course they never mention that their tongue is tingling from all the soot they are tasting as well.

[Big Steve]

Follow up post on the event. They cut off all the bark and used lots of BBQ on the meat. The masses were OK with it from what I was told. For the few in the know they didn't eat it.
The pit is a commercial pit made down south. Olyer or something like that, I couldn't read the name plate very well. They loaded up the firebox at 10 PM with oak which looked OK. I was told they also used lemon wood, which felt heavy which points to it being green but the bark was removed so it couldn't have been that green. Anyway they loaded the firebox at 10 PM, then it let it roll till 4 AM when it was next checked. 6 hours seems like a long time to go, unless they stuffed the FB full. They set the pit temp to 200 degrees (lower than what i've ever cooked at). I'm guessing too much fuel so the dampers all closed and the fire went oxygen lean resulting in the soot.
Seems like we're all on the same wave length about what caused the problem, which gives me some confidence that I'm not out in right field by myself. Hey maybe I have learned a thing or two since building our pit and learning how to cook on it. Thanks for contributing to the conversation everyone.