Thankfully I know what happened. I think, believe it or not, that the heat was too low. As a result, the meat did not get to move past that cooked point to the tender falling apart point. The way I usually smoke is to put a dish of water in the middle of the grill and then put a pile of coals on either side and feed woodchips to both. This time one side of coals didn’t light at the beginning for whatever reason. That has never been a problem before. But the meat was already on so I decided to stick with one side only and flip the ribs every so often for even cooking. But with only one side I had trouble keeping the heat and the smoke up, so that explains that.

Oh well, I guess I’ll just have to try again. Next time I won’t settle for less than the spare ribs that I love so very much.