The Smoker Fuel Budget

Fuel loaded for the long end of your cook, a burn rate you weigh yourself, charcoal, pellets and wood in whole bags, and the price of a cook and a season

SmokerGear's Fuel Burn Time Calculator and Wood Chunk Calculator both ask for one number of hours, and a long cook does not end at an hour: it ends when a thermometer says so. Type the hours you hope for and the load fits the hope. In the worked example, 10 hours of briquettes at a 250 pit loads 8.0 lb, which the calculator itself says lasts 12 hours, while the cook could run to 14. The Smoker Fuel Budget loads for the long end of your own window (11.2 lb in the example), has you weigh one cook to find your smoker's real burn rate (87.6% of the average in the example, so 9.9 lb and two cooks from a 20 lb bag instead of one), counts how many cooks a bag of wood covers, prices a cook by what it burns ($12.31, not the $30 of bags opened), budgets a season in whole bags, and divides any new smoker's price by the fuel it could save: an $800 upgrade would need to cut the example's fuel by 244% to pay back in 5 years. Every figure is computed by code from the site's own calculators and every price is an example. It names no smoker or brand and gives no cooking times or meat temperatures: a food thermometer and the USDA minimums decide when meat is done. Included: 7 steps, 4 printable working pages, a burn-rate and wood table, a quickstart, and a personalised sheet worked from the numbers you enter in the calculators.

Look inside

Two full pages from the pack, exactly as printed. Click either to read it at full size before you decide.

What is in it

• The Long-End Rule: the fuel load for the longest your cook might run, and what the short-end load really lasts
• The Scale Rule: one weigh-in turns the calculator's average burn rate into your smoker's own
• The Chunk Count Rule: wood chunks for the long end, and how many cooks one bag covers
• The Whole Bag Rule: bags for a load, and the reserve that carries into the next cook
• The Burned-Not-Bought Rule: the price of a cook from the pounds it burns, not the bags it opens
• The Season Rule: a season of long cooks in whole bags of fuel and wood
• The Payback Rule: lump, briquettes and pellets priced per cook, and the years any new smoker needs to pay back in fuel
• Working pages: a cook fuel sheet, a weigh-in log, a season bag plan, and a switch and payback sheet
• Bonus: burn rates, loads and briquettes by fuel and pit, and wood chunks by smoker, from the site's calculators
• A quickstart that closes the before-and-after score loop, plus a personalised sheet from your own calculator inputs

The pack picks up where the free Fuel Burn Time Calculator and Wood Chunk Calculator leave off. Both take one number of hours, and a long cook ends when a thermometer says so, not at the hour you typed: the budget loads the fuel for the long end of your own window, has you weigh one cook to find your smoker's real burn rate, turns charcoal, pellets and wood into the whole bags you buy, prices a cook by what it burns and a season by the bag, and divides the price of any new smoker by the fuel it could save. It gives no cooking times or temperatures for meat: a food thermometer and the USDA minimums decide when meat is done. Every figure is an example and it names no smoker or brand.