I've done beef ribs and pork ribs. Pork ribs are so much better and meatier.
I won't spend $3 lb for beef ribs with some meat on them and I won't pay $1 for beef ribs where the meat has been stripped for hamburger. For those of you are brave, you know how much you paid for the beef ribs and how much they weigh. Gather up the bones and scraps of fat and weigh them. Multiply the price per pound you paid for the ribs and then subtract that from the origional price and subtract the weight. The figure out how much you paid per pound. You could have had steak cheaper per pound.
I rub my ribs with dry rub. (Go to allrecipes.com for recipes of wet and dry rubs.) I get the long aluminum disposable pans. I put a trivet in the bottom of the pan and stack the ribs on the trivet and around the pan. I fill the pan with water to the top of the trivet. I try and not let the ribs rest on one another because I want them open to the smoke. I use chunks of mesquite instead of chips. I check the water in the rib pan about every half hour and fill it to the top of the trivets at that time. The rib juice in the bottom of the pan makes wonderful smokey gravy. (Why the water in the bottom of the pan? Humidity. If the ribs are in a high humidity environment, the will be juicier when they are finished cooking.)
I don't like pork and beans straight out of the can, but if you put the smokey water and juices out of the bottom of the rib pan into pork and beans and add any falling of the bone meat from the ribs, the pork and beans will be WONDERFUL!. A friend and I did ribs for the scouts at a camp out. We opened the cans of pork and beans and just let them sit on the cool side of the grill. When we were done with the ribs, we added the water and some of the rib meat and grill-cooked onions to the pork and beans. We put them in long serving pans. I would have ordinarily had half the beans left over. We didn't have any left over. The scouts and their leaders ate all the pork and beans and we had several we had to turn away. That was the first time that had ever happened to me.
I'd cook half a rack for the men and 1/3 a rack of ribs for the women. That's if you get meaty ribs. Meaty ribs? You will find St Louis style ribs in the store weighing between 5 and 8 pounds. The bones weigh about the same. The heavier the ribs the more meat on them. If the ribs don't weigh 7 lbs per rack, I don't buy them.
Good luck to you and yours.