I cooked for a friend's bachelor party last night on his Excel 20. We cooked
about 40lbs of meat, and while we should have only used 2 stackers, we ended up
using 3. Hell.... it wasn't my meat, my charcoal or my cooker. Best time to
experiment!!!!
Two 9lb butts and an 8lb brisket flat went on at 11a. Both butts went on the
bottom level, the brisket flat went on the top level as we were only using two
stackers at this time.
Temps were very consistent at around 240-250 (on both stackers) for about 5
hours. Temps changed after 3 racks of BB's went on the the third stacker and
one rack of BB's rode shotgun w/ brisket on the second level. We put the third
stacker w/ the 3 racks of uncooked ribs on the top level and tented the meat
below. Temp went to about 265-270 on bottom rack (2 butts), 220-225 middle rack
(brisket and 1 rack of ribs) and 190-200 on top (3 racks of ribs). Temps pretty
much hung out the same on all stackers for about another 3 hours.
Since there were hungry, staggering people around, we fired up another chimney
of ONO lump charcoal. Temps blazed between 325 and 375 for about 90 minutes. Butts hit 195 at
around 9:30ish, and got no rest time before being eaten. Ribs and brisket took just a bit longer to cook.
This was our first cook with the ONO brand of lump charcoal and I can honestly say that it was a good match for the Excel 20. It's a solid fuel, but we did go through about 25 lbs of it over the 11 hour cook.
http://www.onocharcoal.com/ Overall, not too bad of a cook using the three stackers, but temps are much more
consistent with only two stackers.
