Temp control on xtra big egg

Jbothwel

Have a medium egg and no problems with temp control. Recently acquired a xtra large egg and having temp control issues. Loaded lump into it, light it with the top and bottom vents wide open. When it reached 300 degrees, I shut the top vent and closed the bottom vent to a quarter inch hoping the temp would reduce. It didn’t and rose to 400+. So I closed the bottom vent, but the temp climb to  450. Had to wait hours until the temp came down to be able to smoke a pork but. Started at 2apm and still smoking at 11 pm. What is going on - must be doing something wrong.

Photo Egg

It takes a lot of heat to initially bring the XL up to temp and warm up the ceramic masses. If you bring it up fast to 300 degrees with both vents wide open you have stoked up a pretty big fire. Much more than is needed to just maintain a lower temp cook. Bring it up slower and you will be good. Same goes for keeping the dome open for excessive amounts of time while flipping wings and such. Will cause temp to spike. 

RyanStl

I agree, you ramped up too fast and probably lit too much charcoal at once.  Once lit I only let a couple spots really catch with an open fire before I put on plate setter and close lid and vents to desired setting 

Foghorn

It's also possible that your dome and base don't close airtight - resulting in an air leak that is allowing more air to get to the fire than you think based on the vent settings.

BigGreenKev

My experience with my XL is that it's tough to bring the temp down once it gets that high with the dome closed.  It's a lot of thermal mass.

EzraBrooks

Being an airplane nerd I think of the XL like a jet and the L (my other) as a prop. On a prop plane when you adjust the throttle you get an immediate change in power. Flying a jet you have to think two steps ahead because it will take longer to react to throttle inputs. 

So on an XL you have to close it down way sooner and have much smaller vent openings to hold the same temps.

Mr1egg

I have a xl primo and if my goal temp is 300 I start closing both the vents slowly around 200 until I get to about 290 

Mark_B_Good

What temperature are you aiming for?

This is my procedure with my XL:

- remove the grid and the indirect plate setter
- clear out ashes
- add lump, create a cavity in lump and light it up in one spot
- close the lid with bottom vent and top vent wide open. Grid and plate setter not inside the egg.
- get to around 250F, open and add the plate setter and grid.
- get to around 200F, close top and bottom to about 50%
- get to around 250F, close top and bottom to about 15%
- get to around 275/280F, close top and bottom to final position (about 3/8").

Takes around 45 minutes to settle there.

If you are heating up that fast though, there has to be an air leak somewhere. You need to really inspect everything, the gasket, the bottom vent (is the silicon still intact?), etc.

Grogu

I had two temp problems starting out with my XL. The first was I had a huge gap at the felt line on the back. I had to loosen up the band on the lid, push it down tight, and tighten the band back up. Things stopped running away after that. The second problem was I had been watching smoking dad bbq YouTube videos where he let his Kamado Joe get rather hot on the thermometer to heat the ceramics and then shutting it down and the temp would drop significantly. Then he’d bring it back up. When I was trying this the temp would never drop back down. I don’t know if this is a Kamado Joe vs Egg thing, an XL thing, or most likely there is something in his process I’m missing and not doing right. I started closing down ahead of the temp and letting the ceramics heat up slower, and I’ve been having better luck. I’m still a bit clueless about where to set the top and bottom to get different temps, so I have to do a good bit of fiddling until I figure out each new temp, but I at least have a fighting chance now.