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When theory doesn't match observations...
Comments
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That's a fine one for sure. Doesn't get much better than that in the cabinet line up. Spicewine and Humphries are outstanding ones too. Don't know if this is important to you are not, the Spicewines were not reverse flow at one time. Don't know if this is still the case or not. Haven't laid eyes on a new one in a few years.Hotch said:Yep I am leaning towards the Safe from Pitmaker.Location- Just "this side" of Biloxi, Ms.
Status- Standing by.
The greatest barrier against all wisdom, the stronghold against knowledge itself, is the single thought, in ones mind, that they already have it all figured out. -
I know several have infrared guns, so who can temp the fire after the egg stabilizes at 225/250? It would be helpful to see what the approximate temp the lump is burning at.Just a hack that makes some $hitty BBQ....
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hard charcoal, the stuff that is lightweight, rings or klinks clearly (sound), will burn around 1100-1200 degrees or so.
your 250 fire is actually a very small 1100+/- degree fire.
backing way out of this and simply looking at a candle will give you a real good picture of what's going on.
candle wax, like charcoal, is (for our practical purposes) a refined fuel.
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I have one of those but it's useless for something like this. It can read the ceramic next to the fire, but the laser can't get a read on Lump. I'll try anyhow, but I doubt it will be accurate.cazzy said:I know several have infrared guns, so who can temp the fire after the egg stabilizes at 225/250? It would be helpful to see what the approximate temp the lump is burning at.XL, Small, Mini & Mini Max Green Egg, Shirley Fab Trailer, 6 gal and 2.5 gal Cajun Fryers, BlueStar 60" Range, 48" Lonestar Grillz Santa Maria, Alto Shaam 1200s, Gozney Dome, Gateway 55g Drum -
A few years back I saw a BBQ a guy was developing that seemed interesting. It had an insulated cook chamber and a separate firebox. To put heat and smoke into the chamber it used a fan to pull the smoke back down through the burning fuel. The idea was the smoke would then be very clean.
Does anyone one know what this unit might be? Did it get made?Chicago, IL - Large and Small BGE - Weber Gasser and Kettle -
There was a guy here years ago that ran an aluminum dryer vent hose from his small egg to his large.
Steve
Caledon, ON
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Found it. It's called Karubeque. Great read on amazing ribs.Chicago, IL - Large and Small BGE - Weber Gasser and Kettle
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there's a guy here (me) who runs an aluminum dryer vent hose from the small (fire box) to the large (smoke chamber). but that's more for cold smoking , because the length of the hose allows the smoke to cool
you could do an offset the same way, but you'd want a shorter connection so the firebox side can heat the chamber side
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Darby_Crenshaw said:there's a guy here (me) who runs an aluminum dryer vent hose from the small (fire box) to the large (smoke chamber). but that's more for cold smoking , because the length of the hose allows the smoke to cool
you could do an offset the same way, but you'd want a shorter connection so the firebox side can heat the chamber side
No, I'm pretty sure this guy was not you. It was years back. I think this guy could set a low fire in his larger egg and do cooks in it too. I always meant to try it but our dryer hoses are in metric.Steve
Caledon, ON
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That is interesting. http://amazingribs.com/bbq_equipment_reviews_ratings/smoker/karubecue-c-60-pitblind99 said:Found it. It's called Karubeque. Great read on amazing ribs.
If you check the two main drawbacks listed in the article: 1) wood pieces have to be a very specific size and 2) you have to feed it wood every 30 minutes or so.
It seems really popular and it sounds like it makes some great Q- but I find it odd that it is a smoker that requires electricity, fan, etc, and they couldn't figure out a way to make a bigger fire box.Which came first the chicken or the egg? I egged the chicken and then I ate his leg. -
well steven, i must have dreamed it, setting it up, posting pics, and all that
j-appledog did an offset with a hose a long time ago, on the forum back when the forum was the forum. that's where i got the inspiration, and may be what you are thinking of
they actually had one egg down low and the other up high, as though for draft. you don't need to do that though, it will draft anyway. it's where i got the idea. which egg serves as the firebox is irrelevant (small, large, same size eggs, whatever). as long as the firebox has the dryer vent coming out the top, and the other end ideally feeds the smoke in through the lower vent.
thing is, if you use a metal vent of any length, it will cool the smoke. the aluminum ones can be compressed to shorten, but they would need to be a pretty direct short flue to bring any heat with them.
i burn around 300-350 in the firebox, and by the time the smoke hits the smoke box, it's effectively ambient temps
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I don't remember you posting back then. (My emoticons don't work imagine winking one here)
Steve
Caledon, ON
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"years ago" and "years ago": inspecific range of time. no points this round.
all i know is "years ago" i posted what you mentioned. a few others too. i don't claim to have invented it.
one guy here, in the past year or so, had a setup with hard round 3" (approx) ducts too.
all you need to do for emoticons is to type it out. typing ';'+ ')' will change to when you hit "post comment"
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OMG it's that "other" brand!
______________________________________________I love lamp.. -
At least it's not one of those rinky dink Komodo Kamados! Sandy Springs & Dawsonville Ga
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You should be ashamed of yourself. Traitornolaegghead said:OMG it's that "other" brand! Location- Just "this side" of Biloxi, Ms.
Status- Standing by.
The greatest barrier against all wisdom, the stronghold against knowledge itself, is the single thought, in ones mind, that they already have it all figured out. -
Yes. I'm learning a great deal.cazzy said:Well said @nolaegghead & @SGH
I like posts like these...they're the most helpful for peeps on the come up!Coleman, Texas
Large BGE & Mini Max for the wok. A few old camp Dutch ovens and a wood fired oven. LSG 24” cabinet offset smoker. There are a few paella pans and a Patagonia cross in the barn. A curing chamber for bacterial transformation of meats...
"Bourbon slushies. Sure you can cook on the BGE without them, but why would you?"
YukonRon -
Have the egg stabilized at 250 and shot the charcoal with a IR gun. Hottest spot I could get was 760 degrees!
NW IA
2 LBGE, 1 SBGE, 22.5 WSM, 1 Smokey Joe and Black Stone
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Hmmm...that is still not at full combustion temps. I wonder how accurate the reading is, as someone mentioned it might not work.Brisket_Fanatic said:Have the egg stabilized at 250 and shot the charcoal with a IR gun. Hottest spot I could get was 760 degrees!Just a hack that makes some $hitty BBQ.... -
a lot of factors involved...
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Close but definitely can't get an exact line to core of the fire.cazzy said:
Hmmm...that is still not at full combustion temps. I wonder how accurate the reading is, as someone mentioned it might not work.Brisket_Fanatic said:Have the egg stabilized at 250 and shot the charcoal with a IR gun. Hottest spot I could get was 760 degrees!NW IA
2 LBGE, 1 SBGE, 22.5 WSM, 1 Smokey Joe and Black Stone
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do you have to select the emissivity of the surface you are shooting? a cast iron pan and polished metal would read differently at the same temp, for example.
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You guys are killing me. Just when I thought I was cooking some pretty good Q, it appears as if I need to buy some other cookers! This will not go down well with SWMBO... Oh the pain...
Craig
Cockeysville, MD
LBGE and a large list of stuff I want
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Sometimes there is way too much science here.
I'll pass on the quantum Egg mechanics and just continue to cook what tastes really good - no physics degree needed.Living the good life smoking and joking -
Great thread!Brisket_Fanatic said:Have the egg stabilized at 250 and shot the charcoal with a IR gun. Hottest spot I could get was 760 degrees!
What's the temperature range on your IR gun, you might be outside the range.
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I don't think it's necessary to measure the temperature of the lump, and here's why: our tastebuds are a very accurate measure of good smoke versus bad. I don't doubt the sections of the Amazingribs article about the requirements for producing good smoke, which basically suggests that a hot fire is required to produce smoke that doesn't smoulder and produce sooty smoke.
If our ceramic cookers are producing smoked food that doesn't taste sooty, then our ceramic cookers are using hot fires, even if they are small. And so I disagree with his opinion that ceramic cookers produce cool fires.
Something interesting that I have learned from this thread is that in order to produce good smoke in traditional offset cookers, the cooking chamber ends up being somewhere between 250º - 275º, which explains a lot of the low/slow phenomenon. Apparently a ceramic cooker can produce good smoke in a cooking chamber at 250º and at 350º, whereas an offset may not be able to do the same thing. It also explains why a boston butt is just as good cooked as a turbo butt on an Egg as when it is cooked at 250º on an Egg. -
Again, the science is correct...I just don't think it matters because it isn't that dirty. If you ran wood instead of lump at the same temps, the story would be completely different.SkySaw said:I don't think it's necessary to measure the temperature of the lump, and here's why: our tastebuds are a very accurate measure of good smoke versus bad. I don't doubt the sections of the Amazingribs article about the requirements for producing good smoke, which basically suggests that a hot fire is required to produce smoke that doesn't smoulder and produce sooty smoke.
If our ceramic cookers are producing smoked food that doesn't taste sooty, then our ceramic cookers are using hot fires, even if they are small. And so I disagree with his opinion that ceramic cookers produce cool fires.
Something interesting that I have learned from this thread is that in order to produce good smoke in traditional offset cookers, the cooking chamber ends up being somewhere between 250º - 275º, which explains a lot of the low/slow phenomenon. Apparently a ceramic cooker can produce good smoke in a cooking chamber at 250º and at 350º, whereas an offset may not be able to do the same thing. It also explains why a boston butt is just as good cooked as a turbo butt on an Egg as when it is cooked at 250º on an Egg.
As mentioned before, all this means to us is that our smoke profile is inferior to what can be achieved on an offset. I know we love our green kool-aid, but this is a fact. This is mainly because we're not in that sweet spot for great clean smoke. You can improve the smoke profile by building smaller hotter fires.
Just a hack that makes some $hitty BBQ.... -
You can't hold 250 by building a "smaller hotter fire".
Inless you are wide open, the small chunk of charcoal which is butning is pretty much burning at one temperature. The dome temp is a result of how much lump is burning, not how hot it is burning.
To a certain extent (until you are probably above 'smoking temps') the lower vent is a throttle which controls the SIZE of the fire, not how hot the fire itself is.
A fire that is getting a free flow of oxygen, one that is free to grow (like vents wide open, or dome open) can certainly get hotter, where the lump is 1200, 1400 etc. Blacksmiths force air into lump and reach smelting temps, white hot, etc. But that's not a naturally drafting fire
in our eggs, for iur purposes, it's more like: the lump of a 225 fire is the same temperature as the lump of a 400 degree fire. There's just less lump in the 225 fire.
You are right that if you could get a very small fire of much hotter lump (forcing air to it), you'd get more smoke from whatever wood was involved, but in an egg, with extra lump all around, that fire wiuld grow in size and dome temps would rise.
Blah blah blah whatever stike, just keep blabbing[social media disclaimer: irony and sarcasm may be used in some or all of user's posts; emoticon usage is intended to indicate moderately jocular social interaction; the comments toward users, their usernames, and the real people (living or dead) that they refer to are not intended to be adversarial in nature; those replying to this user are entering into a tacit agreement that they are real-life or social-media acquaintances and/or have agreed to or tacitly agreed to perpetrate occasional good-natured ribbing between and among themselves and others] -
I don't doubt the science that he refers to in the article - never did. What I doubt is the inference that he makes about ceramic cookers producing bad smoke because the fire is too cool; and apparently you doubt this too when you say you think the smoke from the Egg isn't that dirty. I can produce dirty smoke in my Egg, and clean smoke, and I can taste the difference. There's no cool-aid being passed around in this thread. I have read several statements about offsets producing a different smoke profile because the volume of smoke is completely different, and that makes total sense. So when you say the smoke profile from a ceramic cooker is inferior, I take it that you mean that it is impossible for a ceramic cooker to get as much clean smoke onto the food as an offset, and no one has disputed that. I do dispute your assertion that ceramic cookers cannot get into the sweet spot for good smoke production, and this has to do with the statement made earlier in this thread that a ceramic cooker running at 250º is burning cleanly and is different from a ceramic cooker that was running at 400º and is being choked off to bring it down to 250º.cazzy said:
Again, the science is correct...I just don't think it matters because it isn't that dirty. If you ran wood instead of lump at the same temps, the story would be completely different.SkySaw said:I don't think it's necessary to measure the temperature of the lump, and here's why: our tastebuds are a very accurate measure of good smoke versus bad. I don't doubt the sections of the Amazingribs article about the requirements for producing good smoke, which basically suggests that a hot fire is required to produce smoke that doesn't smoulder and produce sooty smoke.
If our ceramic cookers are producing smoked food that doesn't taste sooty, then our ceramic cookers are using hot fires, even if they are small. And so I disagree with his opinion that ceramic cookers produce cool fires.
Something interesting that I have learned from this thread is that in order to produce good smoke in traditional offset cookers, the cooking chamber ends up being somewhere between 250º - 275º, which explains a lot of the low/slow phenomenon. Apparently a ceramic cooker can produce good smoke in a cooking chamber at 250º and at 350º, whereas an offset may not be able to do the same thing. It also explains why a boston butt is just as good cooked as a turbo butt on an Egg as when it is cooked at 250º on an Egg.
As mentioned before, all this means to us is that our smoke profile is inferior to what can be achieved on an offset. I know we love our green kool-aid, but this is a fact. This is mainly because we're not in that sweet spot for great clean smoke. You can improve the smoke profile by building smaller hotter fires. -
Who is stike?Darby_Crenshaw said:You can't hold 250 by building a "smaller hotter fire".
Inless you are wide open, the small chunk of charcoal which is butning is pretty much burning at one temperature. The dome temp is a result of how much lump is burning, not how hot it is burning.
To a certain extent (until you are probably above 'smoking temps') the lower vent is a throttle which controls the SIZE of the fire, not how hot the fire itself is.
A fire that is getting a free flow of oxygen, one that is free to grow (like vents wide open, or dome open) can certainly get hotter, where the lump is 1200, 1400 etc. Blacksmiths force air into lump and reach smelting temps, white hot, etc. But that's not a naturally drafting fire
in our eggs, for iur purposes, it's more like: the lump of a 225 fire is the same temperature as the lump of a 400 degree fire. There's just less lump in the 225 fire.
You are right that if you could get a very small fire of much hotter lump (forcing air to it), you'd get more smoke from whatever wood was involved, but in an egg, with extra lump all around, that fire wiuld grow in size and dome temps would rise.
Blah blah blah whatever stike, just keep blabbing
Steve
Caledon, ON
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