Tyler Hopper wrote:

> There was some discussion a while back about arranging the lump in a linear
> fashion rather than just dumping it in a pile. Start the fire on one end of the
> "line" and you could keep it small and hot. Never cooked in an offset so I can't
> really say much.

Interesting. Presumably the fire would be arranged to burn from
the damper-end?

> The thing I do on a slow cook on the K7 is to bury the wood chunks under the
> lump in layers and start the fire from the top. This does two things. It burns
> slower going from the top down rather than the bottom up. Secondly by the time
> the wood starts smoking the fire from above seems to burn off a lot of the VOCs
> which prevents billowing smoke.

Good idea; I do something which might be considered similar...

Sometimes I put wood chunks in the firebox *under* the grate,
so the wood is laying on the bottom of the firebox and being
baked from the top. After a few minutes, the wood chunk starts
to charcoalize (and sometimes catches on fire, of course) and
I turn it over and repeat the "baking". Then I take the chunk
and set it on top of the fire and it immediately bursts into
flame. This is one way I avoid billowing smoke.

Cheers,
Dana