Good place you all have here

Hey guys,

Good forum you all have here. The cumulative knowledge level on here is simply amazing. Been lurking for awhile now while I decided on going with a BGE or BSK. I made the plunge this past Friday and left the local dealer with a large BGE, to include enough accessories to get me started for a weekend of grilling and experimenting.

After getting it all slapped together Friday night I placed a good amount of lump in the fire box and let er rip. I didn't plan on cooking anything, but rather I wanted to play around with controlling the temperature of the unit before putting food on the grill. I was amazed at how easily the unit lights and quickly reaches high temperatures. I was equally blown away by how easy it was to reach and hold a steady temperature of ~ 230F. This was without food mind you.

My first cook was a 10# pork butt as I know it's a forgiving cut. I put the cut on the grill Friday evening for an indirect cook after letting it sit in a generous rubbing of dizzy pig for a few hours. I started at 7PM and was able to get the temperature to stabilize to within +/- 5F of my targeted 230F cooking temp. I was well aware that keeping the temp stable with 10 #'s of meat on the grill would be a little more challenging than the night before. I used a ET73 probe to keep track of the grill and food temp. Electing to keep the grill probe at grate level gave me a delta of ~30-50 degrees initially, but closed throughout the cook. Seeing how this was my first overnight cook I decided to bunk out on the couch as not to wake the boss in the event the alarm when off on the ET73. Good thing I did as I'm most certain I would have gotten the boot by the second time the alarm went off!

I set my low grill alarm to 215F with the high alarm on 245F. The first few hours took regular small adjustments on the top vent to keep the temps within the above range. By 11pm I thought I had the temperature stabilized enough to hit the pit. The first alarm when off at 1AM for a low temp warning. After opening her up a bit, I got the temps to stabilize again. This repeated itself about 3 more times throughout the early morning hours. I had a few good hours early on Sunday with little variance with temps. Then, from about 10AM on Sunday until the cut reached 200F I had to make regular adjustments, albeit small. Again, I was amazed at how easy it is to fine tune the airflow to reach a desired temp, but was somewhat surprised at how tricky it was to get it to stay there.

I’m curious if this is common, in that frequent small adjustments are required during a slow and low cook?

The great news is that the butt came out very nicely and was oh so tender and juicy. Sorry to say I didn’t take any pics… I will from here on out. The wife enjoyed the meal so much she requested I do a slow and low for ~30 #’s of butt for a gathering this weekend. I feel pretty comfortable with pulling it off just fine, I would just like to get a few more hours of solid sleep during the cook. Any tips on how to keep the temperature within range would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance for all the help that will surely be provided and it’s nice be a member of the community.

Cheers,
Joe