How 16 Harvard students built the ultimate BBQ bot

Mosca

How 16 Harvard students built the ultimate BBQ bot.

I went in to this expecting to find a lot of mistakes, but the only one I found was that they prefer their brisket falling apart rather than sliceable, a simple adjustment in cooking time. Could this be the next evolution?

Phatchris

Curious why they had to refuel the egg during a brisket cook.

JohnInCarolina

I'll wait for the MIT version.

WeberWho

I just don't know about this perfect bbq bot. In the article it mentions that the BGE downfall is that you need to remove food/grid to reload lump. Anyone who's ever used a BGE knows that reloading lump isn't necessary for 20-30+ hours with descent lump. One of the other articles I've read is that one of the students had to go to the emergency room because he got smoke in his eyes from the smoker. Seriously? We are suppose to believe that this is the greatest new grill when testers are going to the ER from smoke in their eyes? This grill is probably more smoke than fire!

Raymont

Expected more innovation. Only new thing might be the shape of the cooker which appears to contribute to better airflow.

Davec433

I'd buy an App that'd let you run a simulation before you actually cooked the meat. Not sure how accurate or how they would quantify everything.

fishlessman

dropping lump into an egg style cooker while the food is in there i dont think thats a great idea

Botch

Curious how a hyperboloid shape creates a vortex.  And I thought I've read here before that, if there is a hot spot, it's towards the rear of the Egg, not above the intake...?  
Finally, I wish they'd spent more time describing how they could get good smoke flavor with 100% mesquite; do any Texas stick-burners do that?  

Botch

Oh, and a good friend of mine at MIT reports that their version has a KAB built-in....    

Mosca

They didn't call then inability to add fuel to the BGE as a downfall, but as a flaw; I think they just wanted a way to add fuel during the cook:

"Plus, refueling the Egg required removing the meat and grill rack, a flaw the team tackled with a side chute."

Experienced Eggers don't need to add fuel, but they aren't thinking about Eggers, they are thinking about their new model. I might count it as "feature creep", but I could see where it is a useful feature, so I'll accept that it is a good thing.

Yeah, my hot spot is in the back too. Ticks me off sometimes. You fix that hot spot, I'll buy you a beer.

All in all, I found a couple things most interesting, relative to Eggers:

1) Early in the design they went with clay, validating the evolution of thousands of years of kamado style cooking.

2) They used the BGE for comparison. Because if this is going to go anywhere, it has to stand comparison to the best.

fishlessman

adding lump during a cook thru a chute would be bad, you get fresh voc's in the smoke chamber, lump dust floating around, and ash getting disturbed and rising up and peppering the food. i believe they took some assumptions and ran with it, lots of newbies ask how to add lump. it is a nice design to add chips without opening the whole thing up

Mosca

fishlessman said:

adding lump during a cook thru a chute would be bad, you get fresh voc's in the smoke chamber, lump dust floating around, and ash getting disturbed and rising up and peppering the food. i believe they took some assumptions and ran with it, lots of newbies ask how to add lump. it is a nice design to add chips without opening the whole thing up

Agreed.

I poked around a bit, looking for some clarification, but none of the other articles referencing this project tell any more than the Wired article I linked. That article referred to the fuel as charcoal, which to most people means briquets. That would make sense in a science project, because briquets are uniform and predictable. And if they are using briquets, then there is no problem adding fuel during the cook.

More information is needed to decide whether the vent is good (briquets) or bad (lump).

HeavyG

This was shared in a post earlier this summer. Has anyone heard any updates on their progress in getting this to market?