Typical Cool Down Times?

MrJofus

Clearly a newbie question, eh? I used my new Lg BGE last night for the first time. Cooked a pork tenderloin indirect - tasted great. My question is - how long does it generally take for a BGE to self-extinguish after cutting off the air supply? Mine was still plenty warm a couple hours after shutting it off. Just a curiosity question for sure...

Thanks!

stike

that's the ceramic doing its job.

if it's cool to the touch, the cover can go on. other than that, no real worries i can see if it takes 'long' to cool down. it is very efficient. it's also why you can put your hand on it when it reads 750. try that on a metal gasser.

a warm egg doesn't mean the fire is still burning, just means the ceramic is holding heat.

Egg-on-Medford

Newbie, too. Mine took a few hours to cool down last night. I switched the daisy wheel for the green cap to make sure there was no exhaust opening. I was glad to see the temp going down.

stike

your egg will go out even with the top wide oppen as long as the bottom is shut. i know this due to my own ignorance. i shut down one night after tossing the daisy in the egg and shutting the dome, and found it cold the next day, top still open and still full of lump.

might have wasted more lump than if i'd snuffed it properly, but it just proved further the whole idea that in=out. if either of those is '0', the fire will (eventually) go out.

better to shut both vents of course.

Semolina Pilchard

Interesting. I would have thought that with either vent wide open the fire would still burn, albeit at a much lesser rate. Does anyone know how long after both vents are closed does it take for the fire to go out completely? Just curious.

stike

the old kamado manual shows cold smoking temps achievable by keeping the top shut, and just using the bottom vent.
but that's from start-up. you can probably establish a draft where the air comes in and goes out the same vent, but i think it's much harder to do it when you have a draft established already that goes from bottom to top.

PhilsGrill

Easily 4-6 hours.

Egglicious

Thats about normal. The Egg will stay pretty warm for a couple of hours after you close it down. Keep this mind when cooking some foods, you can finish the cook after closing the Egg up.


js

Jersey Doug

We eat dinner sometime between 5:00 and 5:30 so that's when I shut down the Egg. I take out the trash sometime between 8:00 and 9:00 and the Egg is always cool enough to hold my hand on it with no discomfort, and the dome thermometer is below 200º, so I can put the cover on. So my cool down times are between 2-1/2 and 4 hours. What's a little surprising to me is that the Large cools down at least as quickly as the Small.

MrJofus

Thanks all for the replies. Next time I'll relax, not worry, and have a homebrew. OK a microbrew since I'm too lazy to brew my own any more. -Kevin