First, relax. It's rare that anything coming out of the Brinkman is going to be bad. Some is better than others, but it's all usually pretty good unless you way, way overcook it or unless you come up with the marinade or sauce from the devil's anus scrapings in hell or something.
So, have another beer and relax. Doesn't sound like you got anywhere near out of bounds on marinade or rub, so it'll be fine. Just don't overcook.
Adding coal.
I have the big Weber chimney. I fill that baby and let it burn until all the coals are gray, no black ones. Drop them in give them a few minutes to settle down and heat the water and then stick my room temperature meats in, add the wet wood. Keep adding wood so as to have a steady light stream of smoke from the vents. Doesn't have to look like an oil well fire, just some whispy smoke coming out steadily.
Let it run until the temp drops to under 200. When that happens I load about 1/3 of a chimney of new charcoal and fire that off. It takes about 10-15 minutes for that to get going good and then I lift everything off and add this to the charcoal pan. The heat will rise again and I'll add wood again.
Repeat as necessary. If you load a whole chimney to replenish you will get a high heat spike in my experience. Just fool around until you find something between 1/3 and 1/2 that gives you what you want.
Generally, I reload ribs 2 maybe 3 times. Depends on the day. A cool 60-70 degree day will be 3, a hot summer 95 degree day will be two.
Enjoy.
