Ran out of lump mid-cook... Boston butt, with chart

DeltaNu1142 · February 2016

My wife & I have friends, a couple, who just had a baby. I got a great deal on a 9-lb bone-in butt yesterday and figured I'd put it on the Egg & surprise them with some pulled pork and mac & cheese today.

This morning I woke up sometime before 5--typical--and checked Pit Pal. My Egg setpoint was at 230, but the pit temp had started dropping at around 4am (first red line) and was at 200 on the nose (second red line). I went downstairs & took a peek... one little piece of burning lump and a bunch of ash. I pulled the grate and platesetter and refilled the firebox. The chart reflects what happened next... lump lit, and after a little overshoot, the pit temp settled back to 230.

I started last night with a full firebox of Royal Oak. I've done a bunch of 24-hour cooks, with lump leftover afterwards. This was the first time I've run out of lump in two-ish years of Egging. The only anomaly was the ambient temperature... a brisk 50 degrees, where it's usually 85+. That shouldn't make a difference. My mind wandered to the other thread where it was reported that a highly-regarded brand of lump burned through unusually quickly. This cook was on the last third of the bag, and the other cooks went fine. It looks like I'm getting greater variability since I refilled the firebox. It's probably because I didn't attempt to clean it out & there are probably some plugged holes. That's even more likely that's the case since the lump I used was the last of the bag.

I'm not looking for an answer... I'll just chalk it up as an outlier and move on. I do need to go out & get more lump today, though.

lousubcap · February 2016

If you want to ensure you don't run out, load the lump well into the the fire ring. You about double your capacity going from the top of the fire-box to the top of the ring. FWIW-
Edit: Nice recovery and great gesture.

gdenby · February 2016

As lousubcap said, better to fill up into the fire ring.

I haven't used Cowboy for some time, but they used to use hrd wood scraps from a furniture plant. There were pieces of lump that looked like black pieces of well dried red oak. Those burnt quite quickly. So one hint that lump may go faster than usual is if you can easily see the grain and pores of the original wood.

DeltaNu1142 · February 2016

Well, yeah, like I said, I've done lots of 24-hour cooks. I was well into fire ring territory with the lump.

HeavyG · February 2016

Wind and weather will make a difference in lump consumption. In a kamado it is just not as dramatic a difference as with something like a Weber kettle or other plain steel cooker.

blasting · February 2016

I've had to add lump twice mid cook. Both times it was during our coldest days.

I was wary of adding bad smoke so I wrapped in double layer of foil. Did you wrap? If not, did you taste the bad smoke from your mid cook add?

DeltaNu1142 · February 2016

I did not wrap, no... no smoke taste, that I can tell. I pulled the pork and put some bark scraps in the oven to crisp it. It's gooooood.

Ran out of lump mid-cook... Boston butt, with chart

Comments

Categories