The Cook from Hades

Woody

35 lbs Butt on LBGE (chocked full) to feed large Christmas luncheon at work.[p]Midnight - Temp probe not working due to poor placement. Conventional therm off calibration. Calibrate therm and relocate probe.[p]some smaller butts done way too early. Had to pull them at 1:00 am.
Fire went out 2:30 am. Reload and relight.
Dome temp runs up to 550 due to missing the fact that the daisy wheel was wide open.
Pulled remaining 3 butts 3:30 am - Very thick "bark" (charred). Wasted some good Butt.
4 hours sleep- all problems self-inflicted.[p]Reheated pulled pork was a smash hit at the lunheon anyway.[p]Now if Santa would just bring me some cheese to go with my whine.[p]Woody

Spring Chicken

Woody,
You need more than one Egg and less of whatever it was you were drinking LOL...[p]Spring "Learning By Listening" Chicken
Spring Texas USA

fishlessman

Woody,
something ive learned with these large cooks is that you cant trust your gages until it is atleast one third the way into the cook. i set everything up except the meat and get it stabilized for a good hour and a half. then i put the meat in and dont look at the gages for atleast 3 hours. the gage im mostly concerned with would be the meat probe showing that temps are slowly rising. when you put all that cold mass into the egg it gives you a false reading on your probes. you try and compensate and you create a bigger fire than is needed to maintain your false pit temp reading, your really cooking at too high a temp. hours later you notice that the pit temp is too high and you try to lower it, snuffing the fire. i find that its best to start the cook at about 275 because you dont get a good draft flowing with all that cold meat in there. when the temp of the meat reaches 140, i lower my temps to 225 at the grate and slowly cook through the plataue.