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HELLO! I am brand new to this forum... Just found this awesome place about 5 mins ago. I am having a problem with my cooking consistency of fire control. My most recent example is from yesterday. I was experimenting with double indirect and I was going to finish off with direct heat. These were chicken wings. So, I put in my slow roller and on top of that I had the heat deflectors. I built my charcoal up and put some wood underneath on the outsides of the stack of coal. I used 1 fire starter on top of the pile to get it going. I have experimented with leaving the lid open here and closed... This time I let it get going and when the started went out I closed the lid a little and then put all my set up on it. I got the temp up to about 300 f and put my chicken on. I closed the vent to about 1 finger at the bottom and left the top all the way open and it was stabilized. I assumed based on this it would take the chicken 30-40 mins to cook... I checked it maybe 15 mins (not exactly sure) and it was getting really close to temp. So, I decided to pull my stuff out to try to get some direct heat. Almost all the charcoal was white and appeared burned up (which isn't what I expected) I feel like a lot of this is caused by the wood catching fire? But I didn't see any spikes in temp that I noticed. I believe my thermometer in the dome could be way off so I do need to check that. Also, on a side note... how do you shut down and clean up? Once I got mildew/mold in the Joe when I left the coals in. I am paranoid now and waste so much charcoal burning everything off when I am done.