temp. rise

kennyk

I did some ribs this past sunday. Got the egg to 250 and put the ribs on. After 4 hours of steady temp. cooking I foiled the ribs. I went back to check them about 20 minutes later and noticed the temp. rised to about 325. I was curious if this is normal. I have to admit I tend to just dump my charcoal in.

stike

you could have bumped the daisy wheel when putting the  foiled ribs back on.  you also let in a comparatively large amount of air when you opened the dome.

the egg gets all the air it needs from the lower vent.  it's a tiny area.

when you open the dome, you increase that amount of air by a huge amount. fire grows, temp goes up.

gdenby

How long did you have the dome open? Whenever the dome is just opened and closed, there will be a drop for a few minutes, and then the temp will return. If the dome is open for a couple of minutes, or a bunch of times in a row, the temperature will jump up. If it was open 4 or 5 minutes, I would be only a little surprised to see an increase like that.

Alternatively, did the daisy wheel top plate shift position?

stike

another thing which may have happened is you could have corrected for the temp 'drop' you saw when you opened the dome.  thing is, temps don't drop when you open the dome.  omly the thermometer cools, not the egg and fire itself.  sure, there's a dose of cooler air ion there when you shut the dome, but if you open vents in an effort to regain what you perceive as lost heat, you'll end up overshooting once that cooler air is exhausted

the egg will return to the original temp if vents remain unchanged.

kennyk

Thank-you guys for your insight.

twlangan

I agree that opening the dome let enough air in to fire up your lump - assuming the vent settings did not get changed. If you are doing low and slow and need to open the dome for anything, work fast and get her closed back up ASAP.