Just did my first turkey in my 22" WSM. I did a 36 hour soak with the apple/orange brine from the front page on a free range local produced 15 lb bird.

It turned out freaking gooooood.

Nitty gritty:

I was late putting it in the brine, so I didn't do an air dry and instead took the extra brine time.

I brought the WSM with an empty water pan to 350 with the standard method with a full lit chimney of Kingsford blue bag followed by around 2 unlit chimneys, but the 22" is a hungry beast and I had problems keeping it at 350. Today was only around 7C and a steady wind, and at around hour 2 I had to put in a another 20 briquettes or so to finish things off. It would have stayed at 250 for another hour or two, but I wanted the high heat. I did have the WSM lit for over an hour before I put the bird on so the extra fuel is not totally out of line.

The bird took about 3 hours to cook, which surprised me. I was expecting longer for some reason. The meat was very tender, moist, and flavourful. There was a little joint bleeding around the wing joints, but not much at all. I know for sure it was done as I stabbed it many times with my Thermapen.

I collected the drippings in a foil pan on the bottom rack and made a decent gravy. There was a satisfying amount of fond that was a bit more burnt than I like but not too bad. I always find gravy from brined birds salty, which was compounded by the fact that I didn't have any fresh stock and had to use some stock paste. Now that I have turkey bones I suspect tomorrow will be a stock making day.

All in all a most excellent meal! Thanks to Chris and all the posters for providing lots of info!

Hi Jay, Sounds very good. You'll have to include photos next time.