Originally Posted by bensyd

IME, searing at the end 30 seconds a side or so works much better than at the start if you want to avoid a grey band on the meat. That picanha I did a few ago and posted a pic of was done with a quick sear at the end.

Do you use a pit probe as well? My Thermopro has two probes so you can measure pit temp and internal meat temp. That can really help you make adjustments to the air vents to get the temp where you want it. On long slow cooks knowing the pit temp is as important as knowing the meat temp. I wouldn't worry about overfilling with charcoal. If you're worried about not having a sear ready then just have some charcoal heating up in a starter chimney that you can pour in for your sear. Whatever you don't, use charcoal wise, you can use next time.

The way I do a reverse sear is pull it off the BBQ, put some oil and pepper on the steak while the charcoal gets lots of air and starts to get really hot again, then quick sear 60/90 seconds a side and that's it. It would be more difficult to do it that way with a whole tri-tip without adding some hot charcoal to the kettle, because of the area size of the TT.

I use briquettes but they're more like some sort of extruded charcoal (pic here: https://mysliceoflife.com.au/wp-cont...brickettes.jpg). I only use wood for smoke.