Wow, you?re really inspiring me to try something similar.
Can you provide more detail or somewhere I can look it up?
How do you make the chips smoke? Put them there wet? Stones? Water bowl?
The exterior looks quite black, do you scrape it or eat it?
The chips were soaked in cold water for about 45 minutes, then put on top of the coal, als you can see in the picture. I always use briquettes, they're all the same size and consistency, so they burn quite evenly making it easier to control. The chips smoke because the coal don't burn hot enough to actually burn the wood chips, but just smoulders them, providing the smoke. The soaking in water has a couple purposes according to the sources I've read. First, they make the chips last longer. Second, because of the steam it produces, it lowers the temperature inside the barbecue. And third, they produce more nitric oxide laden smoke, making it penetrate the meat more, and giving the nice smoke ring effect to the meat.
the stones were an attempt to create a barrier in the fire pit of the bbq, to create a "hot" half, where the coals were burning, and a "cold" half, over which the meat would sit. It also makes stacking the coal easier, because it's got a barrier on all four sides. Sadly, the stones I had acquired were a bit too large, so I need to acquire some smaller ones. The tin foil you can see under the cold half is also tied in to that, to make sure all air that gets pulled into the bbq goes past the coal, so I got a nice smoke chimney effect, with only the ventilation holes over the meat open.
The water bowl is mostly there to collect the drippings from the meat, so they don't burn up and create nasty side-effects (smoke from burning fat is nasty), and also has a cooling and moistening effect on the inside of the bbq as the water inside it boils.
The blackness on the outside is mostly from the sugar in the rub that caramelized, you can see how glossy it is, and perhaps some of the other spices in there that got blackened during smoking. Contrary to how it looks it doesn't taste burnt at all, just smokey, and spicy and sweet.
A couple things I've learned from this one:
I need more rub, and more spices in there. The outside tasted nice, but a bit more rub and some more spiciness would've made it even better. Still, it's best to err on the side of caution than to completely overdo it on the first try.
Instead of wood chips, I should look where I can source chunks of wood. I have already discovered that Weber sells chunks of smoking wood, but as with anything Weber-branded, it's kinda overpriced. Might try contacting a couple local orchards to see if they sell chunks of their wood.
I should look into a starter, so I can place the hot coal on top of the coal stack, to make it burn even longer and controlled.