I finally stopped fighting my smoker's temp swings by putting a brick in the water pan

Eric Ramirez · 2026-09-25T20:45:04.639822+00:00

Last Saturday I did two pork butts on my 22 inch Weber Smokey Mountain and got sick of the temp bouncing between 225 and 290 every 20 minutes. A guy at the KC BBQ store on Southwest Blvd told me to drop 3 fire bricks wrapped in foil into the empty water pan instead of filling it with water. I tried it on a 9 hour cook and held between 240 and 260 the whole time without touching the vents once. The bark came out way better too since I wasn't dumping steam on the meat all day. Only downside is the cooker takes about 15 extra minutes to come up to temp and it's heavier when I dump ash. I know water pans are a whole debate, but has anyone else switched to bricks or sand and regretted it?

HW Forums

Loading…

I finally stopped fighting my smoker's temp swings by putting a brick in the water pan | BBQ Pitmasters - HW Forums