Truly a gift from one of the Gods.

Dondgc said:

@sgh - how long does it take to get #9 fired up and standing by?

Due to its sheer size, a good hour and a half when it's good weather. Longer during inclement weather. On the really large units, I usually give them a 2 hour window to warm up and saturate the entire cooking chamber with heat. Some of my smaller rigs can be ready to roll in as little as 30-45 minutes. I'm one of those people who believe in a good preheat time. Even when using the BGE. Here is why. Take a cold BGE (or any small smoker) and build a roaring fire in it. In mere minutes the temp gauge will read over 500 degrees. But you can safely lay your hand on the dome. Why? The ceramics have not had time to absorb the heat. Even though you ran the temp gauge up to 500 the ceramics are still cool to the touch. On the other hand if you build a normal fire in your BGE and slowly walk the temp up to 500, the ceramics have time to absorb the heat and come up to temp. On a BGE that is truly 500 degrees, there is no way that you will lay your hand on it. Same applies to the big rigs. It is for this reason that most anytime I post grub cooked on the big units i always let them idle at a given temp before I add the food. To be sure the entire cook chamber is up to temp. I find that a properly preheated rig runs much more even. Thus I'm not chasing temps constantly.