Most bizarre cook ever - water and turbo

bigeggdan

Two weird things on my cook today.  First, I keep having this issue when I cook low and slow that the bottom of my egg fills up with water condensation. Happened again today on a cold day in Indy.  During the cook a bunch of water had dripped out of the vent onto the patio, that isn't unusual.  What is crazy is there was about 1/8 inch of water in the Egg itself. (This is now my second Egg base, my first once cracked because of this issue before.)

I know the Egg was dry when I started the cook and that the drip pan was not leaking.  This is condensation occurring during the cook.

The second weird thing:  all day long, the pork butt temp would increase only about 3 degrees an hour.  Once I found the water issue, I brought the pork in the house to finish in the oven. It was at 170 degrees.  I wrapped it in HDAF and put it in the oven at 275 degrees.  I literally watched the temp steadily increase to 197 in about 40 minutes!  It went from 3 degrees an hour to 27 degrees in 40 minutes!  My theory is that the thermometer reading in the Egg was artificially low because it was in a wet Egg?  Never seen a turbo finish cook that fast before!

So its 1:07am now, about 30 degrees outside... I'm letting the Egg stay lit until it burns out.  I don't want the water in the Egg to freeze, it's a race to see if all the moisture can evaporate before the Egg temp falls off and it gets freezing.

I let the pork rest for a couple hours and just shredded the meat about an hour ago.  It was amazing.  Prob the one of the best I've ever made.  So ironic.

I think I'm the only one that has this issue.  Lucky me.

lousubcap

For your next cook run with an empty air-gapped drip pan.  Using a filled water pan will lead to quite a humid environment inside the BGE.  Worth a try as I didn't read of any other source for the water.  FWIW-

Philly35

There’s no need for a liquid filled drip pan in an Egg imo. The way it’s designed, it doesn’t dry food out like other smokers can. Something tells me you should calibrate your dome thermometer as well. They can get funny especially in colder climates. Most people tend to think that it shouldn’t need calibrated, but there is an adjustment on them to calibrate them because they can get out of whack. 

alaskanassasin

What temp were you smoking at? Hdaf will accelerate a cook substantially. Google Texas crutch  

bigeggdan

Update: I happened to wake up at 7am and much to my delight after 22 hours my Egg was still a bit warm, meaning the water hadn't had a chance to freeze.   So I carefully wheeled the Egg into my garage, emptied it out and then a couple of hours later fired it back up again - in the driveway - to cook some bbq chicken and chops.  During the cook a watched a ton of water drip from the vent, then shortly later it stopped and everything was dry.  Few hours later, cleaned it out and wheeled it back around the house to its normal spot.  Dodged a bullet considering how much water was in my Egg in 17 degree weather!!!

Lesson learned: no longer using a water pan, especially if has been raining during the previous week.  Also, I appreciated how fast the pork finished in the oven, however I prefer to keep the pork unwrapped for the crusty bark and am willing to wait with a longer cook.

RyanStl

Thread title should be changed to "This is Why You Don't Use a Water Pan" and stickied in a FAQ sub forum.

UncleKeith

This is interesting to me. 

I only live about 30 minutes south of Indy and have smoked in my egg year round. Ambient temps from -5f one New Years to the 90’s in the summer with a water/beer filled drip pan. I have never experienced condensation in my kamado’s.

fishlessman

the ash in my egg up at the lake turns into a wet paste. if im doing a cook on the weekend i do a clean burn a day or two before. we have winter and mud season up there

bigeggdan

After cook after cook with water left in the bottom of my BGE I think I finally know what's going on!!!  Last night 10 minutes after I lit my BGE for a low and slow I noticed that water was already accumulating in the lip of the bottom vent assembly. My theory is that the humid air rushing into the egg (or water absorbed in the BGE ceramic) is condensing over the vent assembly and accumulating in the lip.  The water then either drains on the ground or back into the BGE base.  I spent about 20 minutes with a paper towel to suck up the water and eventually just left a piece hanging over the lip (it wasn't anywhere near heat or flame).  This morning after 13 hours the paper towel is a touch wet but there is no massive amount of water as in the past. I'm going to start a new thread for this in case anyone else has experienced this. 

Ozzie_Isaac

Do you have a sprinkler or something that sprays your egg?  Maybe a roof overhang that directs water onto it?  I have never heard of any amount of water accumulating in an egg, especially during a cook.  Would love to see some pictures of the egg setup and the accumulated water.  I do not think I understand the situation.

RRP

Ozzie_Isaac said:

Do you have a sprinkler or something that sprays your egg?  Maybe a roof overhang that directs water onto it?  I have never heard of any amount of water accumulating in an egg, especially during a cook.  Would love to see some pictures of the egg setup and the accumulated water.  I do not think I understand the situation.

Good question - but that reminds me of a funny incident about 16 years ago at a KCBBQS sanctioned event on the river park in downtown Peoria. Apparently at 5 am the massive lawn irrigation system kicked on and drenched everything - far worst than what a hard rain could have done! Some contestants suffered serious food and equipment damage since some were sitting on or close to the buried heads. And being a Saturday morning no one at the park district could be located with a key to turn it off so they simply had to wait for the timer to go off!

Ozzie_Isaac

RRP said:

Ozzie_Isaac said:

Do you have a sprinkler or something that sprays your egg?  Maybe a roof overhang that directs water onto it?  I have never heard of any amount of water accumulating in an egg, especially during a cook.  Would love to see some pictures of the egg setup and the accumulated water.  I do not think I understand the situation.

Good question - but that reminds me of a funny incident about 16 years ago at a KCBBQS sanctioned event on the river park in downtown Peoria. Apparently at 5 am the massive lawn irrigation system kicked on and drenched everything - far worst than what a hard rain could have done! Some contestants suffered serious food and equipment damage since some were sitting on or close to the buried heads. And being a Saturday morning no one at the park district could be located with a key to turn it off so they simply had to wait for the timer to go off!

Oh man!  What a mess, to bad we didn't have camcorders in everyone's pockets back then.  Would at least have made a funny video.

RRP

Ozzie_Isaac said:

RRP said:

Ozzie_Isaac said:

Do you have a sprinkler or something that sprays your egg?  Maybe a roof overhang that directs water onto it?  I have never heard of any amount of water accumulating in an egg, especially during a cook.  Would love to see some pictures of the egg setup and the accumulated water.  I do not think I understand the situation.

Good question - but that reminds me of a funny incident about 16 years ago at a KCBBQS sanctioned event on the river park in downtown Peoria. Apparently at 5 am the massive lawn irrigation system kicked on and drenched everything - far worst than what a hard rain could have done! Some contestants suffered serious food and equipment damage since some were sitting on or close to the buried heads. And being a Saturday morning no one at the park district could be located with a key to turn it off so they simply had to wait for the timer to go off!

Oh man!  What a mess, to bad we didn't have camcorders in everyone's pockets back then.  Would at least have made a funny video.

I didn’t even finish telling about all the damage to the park grounds. Obviously all the teams had trucks pulling trailers and large grills as well as camping trailers. As I recall it had already been a wet week there in June so the ground would probably have been damaged even without the additional irrigation. Well, as it turned out trailers got stuck, pickups tore up turf and I’m sure tempers were involved as well! That park was a sorry mess and the park district worked the rest of the summer filling ruts and planting grass! BTW that was the only time the event was held in Peoria and later ended up in Morton.