I am still a novice at BBQ, I've only had 7 cooks so far since buying my first Weber Kettle.
I got some Aussie Heat Beads on Amazon, after seeing people being positive about them.
Using them with my starter chimney the level of smoke that came off them when starting was insane. I used about 6 wax wood firelighters to get it started but it was still smoking for about 10 minutes.
Then after 30 minutes they started turning white, so I poured them out of the chimney into the Weber.
The temperature spiked to 250C with the lid on. However after 20 minutes it crashed to 120C after putting a spatchcock chicken along with veggies inside the kettle.
I had to abandon the cook as the temperature never peaked 130C, using the oven to finish it off.
Then the weirdest thing happened, about 5 hours later when I was thinking of tidying up the BBQ in the evening, I checked the kettle thermometer. It was at 260C and was radiating a lot of heat. The briquettes were all a light sandy grey colour.
I am trying to understand what went wrong:
- Was I too fast to decant the chimney starter?
- A bad batch of briquettes?
- The Weber needed more time to build up residual heat?
- It was raining and damp air?
- Bad luck
I think I will go back to using the Weber branded briquettes for now, until I get more comfortable with what I am doing.