White Smoke

jwc6160

I’ve had this issue before and seems to be happening on a regular basis. When my egg hits 400-500, the smoke goes from the almost clear blue to the thicker white smoke you get when you first light it. I just did a clean burn this weekend so my egg was clean with a basket full of new Royal oak. I was smoking a whole chicken at about 325 and the smoke was blue. I wanted to speed it up a bit so I opened the vent and it got above 400 and the smoke turned as it heated up. It isn’t a huge deal with something like chicken, but I can’t figure it out. I have stopped doing pizzas because the crust is too smoky tasting because of this issue. What am I doing wrong?

abtaylor260

Are you putting in wood chunks? If so, where are you placing them? if they are spaced out then pushing the temp up may have started burning the chunks further away. Or, it could be a combination of burning chicken fat.

Griffin

Were you cooking direct or indirect? Could be the fat dripping on to the coals if you were going direct.

More info needed on what kind of wood and the placement of the wood.

fishlessman

ive seen it happen with lump that was not fully burned off in the kiln, maybe look in the bag for unburned pieces. when i did have this happen it was just a matter of letting the preburn take longer. used to find this with cowboy a few years back

bikesAndBBQ

Big changes in the vents can cause some bad smoke. The fire has to stabilize to create good smoke. I bet you fire was a little unstable when you opened the vents a lot more.

DoubleEgger

Buy Rockwood and you won’t have that problem. The white smoke is from under carbonized lump. When you cranked the temp up, the fire spread to some under carbonized lump.

Fred19Flintstone

Is there a new pope??

Seriously. I think perhaps you got a bad bag of lump. Go buy a fresh bag that is not from the same batch. Rockwood is good. If the problem persists, then maybe your smoke wood is funky.

caliking

https://eggheadforum.com/discussion/comment/2423278#Comment_2423278

+1. I think it's from the chicken sweating like a whore in church when you crank the temp up.

Try using a foil pan under the chicken next time, and see if the same thing happens.

StillH2OEgger

Does the white smoke smell bad? I don't do a lot of direct grilling with the BGE, but I know when I am grilling brats I will get what looks like a steam bath every time I close the lid when I'm getting towards the end of the cook. I can't imagine why, assuming your burned off the VOCs while getting up to temp, that you would be getting the undesirable acrid smoke like you will have immediately after lighting up.

jwc6160

Sorry, I forgot about posting this. Some answers to questions. This has been going on for a while so it isn’t a “bad bag” of Royal Oak. As I mentioned, it happens a lot when I cooked pizzas and so I have stopped because the crust tastes like smoke. This time I put only a small piece of cherry wood in the center where the fire was and there were no additional wood pieces in the grill as I just completed a clean burn prior to this cook. I am also using the plate setter. It only happens when the temp starts to get high. It’s almost like someone threw a handful of wood chips on the fire.

maybe I am just doing something wrong. This is my normal process for starting. I fill the box with royal oak, use a weed burner to start a fire in the middle, let it get up to temp, add place setter, and when the smoke clears set on my meat of choice. It makes sense that if I crank it up the fire will spread to “unburned” lump and create new white smoke? How do you prevent this? The box is always going to have lump that isn’t completely burned until the fire spreads completely???

StillH2OEgger

The lump doesn't need to be burning to get rid of the VOCs, from what I understand. Others can hopefully confirm this. I'm not sure what the temp needs to be, but apparently it gets warm enough in the BGE to take care of rest of the lump.

lousubcap

@StillH2OEgger asks a great question regarding smoke smell. However, given your pizza crust smoke smell the answer may be there. That said, the VOC's (bad smoke) are long gone from all the lump in the BGE by the time you get ready to dial up the temp. Thus I can't believe it is uncarbonized lump every time but that's where your description points. Would that the solution were easy but changing brands of lump may be the simplest thing to try as mentioned above. FWIW-

mahenryak

If it were me I would try a different brand of charcoal. I agree that Rockwood would be a great investment at this point. I am still suspicious of your RO, even though it is spanning multiple bags. Are you buying it from the same store, so maybe they got a bad shipment, or something else that could explain why multiple bags of RO are all behaving this way. In any event, the lump is the easiest thing to control at this point. Take RO out of the equation, if you haven't already.

One more thing is how are you regulating your temp? Is it possible you are relying too much on the top vent versus the bottom to control your temp.? I normally have the top vent cover off when cooking high heat. I wouldn't think this would be too big of an issue since this is how some of the pit controllers work but maybe worth mentioning.

DoubleEgger

Agree. Changing lump is easy in the process of elimination to determine the root cause of your problem. I know others will disagree, but it’s called Royal Choke for a reason.

hvhunter

Up until a year ago, I was a RO guy, mainly due to the fact it was available at Home Depot. All of a sudden, the quality seemed to drop off a cliff. White smoke and the food picked up the undesirable taste of it. Been a Rockwood guy ever since. Ace Hardware carries it, or you can have it shipped there for free.

bikesAndBBQ

For the pizza cooks, what temps are you aiming for and how long do you let them stay there before putting the pizza on? I am also curious of how you control temperatures.

jwc6160

Been using Home Depot Royal Oak for 5 years or so. Willing to try others but the cost of Rockwood is pretty steep in comparison. I guess I can try it and see what happens to potentially get the answer to my problem. I control the temp from the top vent for the most part. If I’m smoking a chicken at 300 or so I’ll have the bottom open all the way and the top opened an inch or so (rough guess). If I want to crank it up I’ll open the top a bit more. I’ll try a bag of rock wood and see. If that works maybe I’ll just keep a bag on hand for pizza and other high temp cooks. Thanks for all the suggestions.

mahenryak

Thank you for providing the information on how you control your temperature. I think your focus on the top vent as your control may be adding to your problems. A wide open bottom vent is not the norm for a 300 F cook, or for most any cook, for that matter. This is a fundamental error, in my opinion.

I searched and found this old thread from 2012 that includes some pics:

<https://eggheadforum.com/discussion/746823/vent-settings-a-visual-guide/p1>

Again, if I am cooking a pizza I am going to take the top vent completely off and probably start with the bottom vent shy of 50% (maybe only 35% to 40%). Some would start with the bottom wide open and dial it back but I don't even do this. Anyway, the details can vary but the emphasis is that you want to focus your control with the bottom vent and use the top for tweaking temps. when cooking at lower temps.

nolaegghead

...and here I am thinking we got a new pope.

Carolina Q

Out of town for the past week or so. Weber kettle with Walmart RO. Lit with canola and paper towel. Chicken thighs, ribeye, beef short ribs, burgers so far. All of ‘em delicious. No bad smoke, no over/under cooking even without my forgotten T-pen. May have to start cooking more on my Weber when I get home. RO is not an issue. Perfect size pieces too, and no off tastes.

nolaegghead

White smoke is smoke with steam in it. Doesn't always mean it's bad. Most of the time the steam is from moisture in the lump/charcoal/wood. When the fire is established and burning at a steady state, the areas to burn next have already been dried from the heat of the fire, and the VOC compounds usually come off with the water.

That said, usually a good sign your fire hasn't established itself. Smell it.

mahenryak

https://eggheadforum.com/discussion/comment/2423717#Comment_2423717

LOL. Good one. The association I first made was with some band, and, of course, there is one...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_hVvCkseOIU