Charcoal snake method took me 4 hours to figure out, should have been 20 minutes

I kept trying to do the snake method in my kettle for a long cook and the fire kept dying out around the halfway mark. Took me four separate Saturdays, about 4 hours total of fiddling with ring placement and briquette spacing, before I realized I was building the snake too tight against the bottom vent. Once I left a little gap under the first row for airflow, it burned steady for 8 hours straight. Anyone else spent way too long on something that turned out to be one tiny dumb detail?

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schmidt.amy4d ago

Wait, the bottom vent was the whole issue? That's wild, I would have never thought of that! I'm honestly impressed you stuck with it for four Saturdays, I would've given up after the second try.