Egg sweats; temperature drops. What can I do?

kandrc

I searched the forums for issues with eggs "sweating".  The most relevant thread I found asked for pictures of sweaty eggs.  Some of them were really foul and nasty looking.  But I couldn't find any that discussed the temperature drop that comes with the sweat.

I use my egg at least weekly in the warmer months, and at least two weeks out of four when it's cold.  It sweats every time.  When I'm doing a low-and-slow, sweating is not an issue, as temperatures stay where I want them.  However, when cooking hot and fast, my egg will start to sweat and the dome temp will fall, often as much as 500F.  For direct cooking, like steaks or lamb chops, this isn't terribly important, either.  Where it gets painful is indirect.

Typical problem scenario:

Guests are coming for dinner.  We're doing wood-fired pizzas on the egg.  Toppings are prepped.  Sauce is made.  Dough is risen.  Egg is full and lit evenly, configured with plate setter and pizza stone, and damped to save fuel while the wife "entertains" guests as if they are not here for the egg.

Finally, she lets them go.  I open the dampers and toss a crust.  Guest tops his or her pie.  Carry pie to egg.  Temp is 600F-800F range.  Burp, place pie, set timer for 5 minutes, and prep next pie.  Egg starts sweating.  Temp falls to 100F-200F range.  Crust turns out poorly.  Next pie turns out poorly and takes 12-15 minutes!  Egg is wide open, but temperature won't come back up until third or fourth pie.  I'm embarrassed; guests rave about how good their pizzas are, because even failed BGE pizza is better than Pappa Johns.

In case you're not familiar with sweating eggs, I've attached some pictures that I took a few nights ago.  Temp was about 600F literally less than a minute before this picture; here down to <100F.  In this case, doing a direct cook (bone-in ribeye), so no big deal.

ColtsFan

I got nothing... Beside it's obviously possessed. 

Curious to hear feedback as well. Maybe do a clean burn?

And Welcome to the forum! 

Dobie

Thats bizarre I can't even shut my egg down that fast. Are you cooking pies high in the dome and the thermo is making contact with the cold food?

SoCal_Griller

In my experience, the sweating is caused by the ceramics exposure to moisture, usually rain.  Is it possible that the lump your using got wet?  That's a huge drop! 

Carolina Q

kandrc said:

damped to save fuel 

What does this mean?

HofstraJet

Here's a link to a search for the threads about sweaty eggs. Consensus is that, as @SoCal_Griller said, the egg was exposed to moisture and when heated the moisture is driven out, hence the sweat.

https://www.google.com/search?q=sweat+site:eggheadforum.com&amp;oq=sweat+site:eggheadforum.com&amp;aqs=chrome..69i57.5612j0j7&amp;sourceid=chrome&amp;ie=UTF-8

Here's my favorite one: http://eggheadforum.com/discussion/1140633/bad-egg-warranty-claim

Eggdicted_Dawgfan

What if you let the egg sweat out the moisture prior to adding the first pizza? Just a thought. 

PBandJ

How long is the egg temp at 600 before you put the first pie on? Sounds like it needs to heat up a little longer.

jtcBoynton

A lot longer. The description is pretty spotty, but it sounds like the egg ceramics never were warmed up to 600°.  An instant air temp reading of 600° is not the same as warming up an egg to a steady state temperature.  @kandrc bring the egg up to 600° and hold it there for one hour before cooking. You might be amazed at the results.

Killit_and_Grillit

I agree with letting it stabilize for a while at 600. Your stone isn't even warm yet. 

But it I would double check your thermometer. If I had a 600 degree fire it would take me an hour and a half to get it back that low. Even with damp charcoal. Something's not adding up. 

GATraveller

I'm going to agree with the above suggestions of allowing the egg to stabilize at the desired temp for a longer period of time.

sctdg

Sounds a little far fetched. As someone else said it takes a long time to get back down to 100 from 600 even when its 20 degrees f and lower .At 350 I'm taking food in ,eating what I cooked ,having a cup of coffee ,cleaning up and I still have to wait before covering egg so it is cooled down to about 150 or so and my egg does not leak . At 600 I'm eating at 6pm and able to cover at 10pm

OhioEgger

kandrc said:

 when cooking hot and fast, my egg will start to sweat and the dome temp will fall, often as much as 500F.  
...
Temp was about 600F literally less than a minute before this picture; here down to <100F.  

This stuff is not even close to believable.
I call troll.

tenpenny_05

Are you sure you're not sticking the thermometer probe into the pizza??

GoooDawgs

I leave uncovered all the time and it will sweat, but nothing nasty like you show.  It's just water being pushed out.

Like others say, let it warm up longer.   Also I use an infrared thermometer to see what temp the stone is at.  You cant tell my looking at the dome- I've had the stone +/- 200 degrees before from the dome thermometer.  If the stone is raised high in the dome that dome thermometer is pretty useless.

Eggaroo

Are you sure your temperature is going down? You might have wrapped your thermometer past 0 and it is actually going up! That's the only way I know of to get it to 100 in less than a minute.

The Cen-Tex Smoker

The Cen-Tex Smoker

you are lucky you haven't thrown the dome open to see what the problem was...poof.

ewyllins

tenpenny_05

SmokingPiney

Wrapping the thermo made sense until I read this:

"Temp is 600F-800F range.  Burp, place pie, set timer for 5 minutes, and prep next pie.  Egg starts sweating.  Temp falls to 100F-200F range.  Crust turns out poorly.  Next pie turns out poorly and takes 12-15 minutes!" 

With a nuclear Egg wrapping the thermo, just opening the Egg would be like opening the Gates of Hell - a surely unforgettable experience I would expect the OP to mention. If the Egg was nuclear, the last pie would be near incinerated in 12-15 minutes.

Missing something here........

The Cen-Tex Smoker

SmokingPiney said:

Wrapping the thermo made sense until I read this:

"Temp is 600F-800F range.  Burp, place pie, set timer for 5 minutes, and prep next pie.  Egg starts sweating.  Temp falls to 100F-200F range.  Crust turns out poorly.  Next pie turns out poorly and takes 12-15 minutes!" 

With a nuclear Egg wrapping the thermo, just opening the Egg would be like opening the Gates of Hell - a surely unforgettable experience I would expect the OP to mention. If the Egg was nuclear, the last pie would be near incinerated in 12-15 minutes.

Missing something here........

Its the dough. This egg is wrapping around. Eggs dont cool off 100 degrees in minutes when wide open. 

SmokingPiney

The Cen-Tex Smoker said:

SmokingPiney said:

Wrapping the thermo made sense until I read this:

"Temp is 600F-800F range.  Burp, place pie, set timer for 5 minutes, and prep next pie.  Egg starts sweating.  Temp falls to 100F-200F range.  Crust turns out poorly.  Next pie turns out poorly and takes 12-15 minutes!" 

With a nuclear Egg wrapping the thermo, just opening the Egg would be like opening the Gates of Hell - a surely unforgettable experience I would expect the OP to mention. If the Egg was nuclear, the last pie would be near incinerated in 12-15 minutes.

Missing something here........

Eggs dont cool off 100 degrees in minutes when wide open. 

Not just cooling off by 100 degrees. The OP stated that the temp fell to 100 to 200 - about a 600 degree drop.

I honestly don't think he wrapped his thermo and went nuclear.  I've never cooked pies over 600.  I think 12-15 minutes in a 1000+ nuclear Egg would cook a pie to near incineration. 

Sounds like the OP has some wierd thermometer issues - it doesn't read like he went full Chernobyl.

 That's why I said there a missing pieces to this puzzle. 

stompbox

Sweat has nothing to do with temps.  Mine has been having meat sweats everyday right now and the highest I have gone was 450.

The Cen-Tex Smoker

SmokingPiney said:

The Cen-Tex Smoker said:

SmokingPiney said:

Wrapping the thermo made sense until I read this:

"Temp is 600F-800F range.  Burp, place pie, set timer for 5 minutes, and prep next pie.  Egg starts sweating.  Temp falls to 100F-200F range.  Crust turns out poorly.  Next pie turns out poorly and takes 12-15 minutes!" 

With a nuclear Egg wrapping the thermo, just opening the Egg would be like opening the Gates of Hell - a surely unforgettable experience I would expect the OP to mention. If the Egg was nuclear, the last pie would be near incinerated in 12-15 minutes.

Missing something here........

Eggs dont cool off 100 degrees in minutes when wide open. 

Not just cooling off by 100 degrees. The OP stated that the temp fell to 100 to 200 - about a 600 degree drop.

I honestly don't think he wrapped his thermo and went nuclear.  I've never cooked pies over 600.  I think 12-15 minutes in a 1000+ nuclear Egg would cook a pie to near incineration. 

Sounds like the OP has some wierd thermometer issues, and it doesn't read like his Egg went nuclear.

 That's why I said there a missing pieces to this puzzle. 

Thats what i meant.  They don't cool off 600 degrees in between pies. That thermo is wrapped. 

HoustonEgger

it's either wrapping the thermo or this:

tenpenny_05 said:

Are you sure you're not sticking the thermometer probe into the pizza??

Theophan

When I was studying science, and scientific research, one of the crucial things they taught me to do was to look for "confounding variables," which means something other than what you're looking at that might have caused the observed results, instead of what you think caused the results.

• You observe ugly goo "sweating" out of the Egg.
• You observe a big temperature drop.

You think they're connected.  I DON'T.  I think they're two independent things that have nothing to do with each other.

I've seen ugly goo "sweat" out of my Eggs ONLY when I'me doing a high temperature burn to clean out an Egg that I've used a lot but mostly for low-and-slows for a while.  I don't cook pizzas, but if I cooked a pizza, the temps would be the same, and the "goo" would be the same!  I agree with those above who say it's moisture that's built up in the ceramic because the temps have been too low to drive it out.  I'd bet money that when this happens, you have NEVER just done a high temp cook the day before!

So I think there's a different reason, nothing to do with the "sweating," that is causing your temperature problem.  Because you get lousy crusts, I believe you  that there is a temperature drop, but I also agree with those who say they flat do not believe that the Egg really could have been at 800° and then 5 minutes later it's 100°.  I just don't think that's possible.  So here's what I recommend:

1. Calibrate your thermometer. Make sure it's accurate.
2. Be very watchful as others said about making sure it does not touch the food.
3. Cook some pizzas WITH NO GUESTS, so NO "damping the fire" before the cook!  Maybe something's happening during that process that's messing things up.  When no guests are there, and there's no reason to delay cooking, light the fire, put in the plate setter, pizza stone (with foil or whatever between the stone and the plate setter), and let the fire stabilize at the cooking temperature for at least half an hour.  (So let's say keep it at 800° for half an hour.
4. THEN cook the pizzas and see if the same thing happens.  I bet it won't.

The Cen-Tex Smoker

HoustonEgger said:

it's either wrapping the thermo or this:

tenpenny_05 said:

Are you sure you're not sticking the thermometer probe into the pizza??

Ive done that before. He says hes cooking a ribeye in the picture above. That egg is wrapped and im guessing if the pizza cooks act just like this, they are wrapped too.

We know for a fact that eggs cannot cool that rapidly. Even if you took all the lump out or poured water on it the ceramics would be heated for hours if the egg was 600-800 degrees 

hes saying its running "wide open". Wide open eggs go up, not down. Hes inside prepping the next pie and the egg wraps. Happens all the time  

We also know that eggs sweat when high heat forces the water out

the only question for me is now dough and set up.

That egg is hot. 

Biggreenpharmacist

I took "damped the fire" to mean he has the vents set to a really low temp until he is ready to cook. Then opens the vents to ramp up the temp. Sounds like he needs to run the temp up to 600 and let it stabilize. I think he's hitting 600 and throwing on the pizza which gives a quick temp drop but not that drastic. Definitely needs to calibrate thermometer and probably needs to wipe the cheese off it before doing that. 

that_dude_Dave

if the thermometer wrapped, wouldn't there be a lack of smoke? in the pic it looks like it's just wafting around...

Legume

maybe the egg was in the stall?

I really just opened this thread because I thought egg sweats were a cool hand luke kind of thing.