Fast Light and Temperature Stable

Grandpas Grub

 
I was playing around with the eggs yesterday and the day before and accidentally discovered another lighting idea.

BGE recommends to light the lump and leave the dome open for 15 minutes. That doesn't work well for me. I had a bunch of accessories sitting the the egg mates when I lit the lump with alcohol. I closed the dome and the leg of the spider was in between the dome and base. I looked at it and thought why not leave it and see what happens. The had the normal spike and drop as it does with either alcohol, starter cubes or oil napkin. However, the egg light and got stable what seemed quicker.

So now to test and see what happens. I decided to clean out the ash and under the grate fill the fire box with fresh lump about 1" below the top of the fire box.

I again used alcohol and this time. After the light I put a 1/2" ceramic spacer (kiln stilt) under the handle between the dome and base.

In 4 minutes the dome had the usual spike to 750° then the draw down and slower raise o 400°. This happened in just under 4 minutes. I adjusted the vents to hold 400° and there it stayed for 30 minutes until I shut the egg down. When the egg had cooled down I used the same lump no stirring and lit with oil and paper towel. Again, a very fast light.

The third test was with MAPP. I lit in 3 places and put in the spacer and again got the egg more stable.

I was very pleased with the performance of the light and getting the egg stable.

The same test on my medium was slower but I think that is do to the Undersized firebox and small fire ring in my particular medium.

GG

stike

i always light the egg and shut the dome. leaving it open does nothing good for the fire, since you get a lazy flow of aire from the top. that's not at all what you want in your fire. you want to establish a draft as quickly as possible from below, through the lower vent. starting it with dome open defeats that.

i also think the "spike" at the beginning isn't a dome temp spike, it's merely flames from the starter materials hitting the dome thermometer. the dome itself is cold. i don't give the early 'spike' any respect. it's just local flame temps. can't cook anything by it really.

i think the only logical reason BGE advocates dome open when lighting is because the starter cubes need that much open air, or they will go out and smolder, throwing that horrible sooty smoke.

any other method probably does better with the dome-closed

2Fategghead

Last week I ran out of mapp gas so I used my starter cubes. I must admit the next time I went out I bought another bottle of mapp gas.

Kent, We have talked about liting your egg with a full load of lump using a mapp torch and on the next day instead of sturing the ash out of the lump before liting simply lite and that way the air passages are still there and the egg comes to temp fast.