Overnight Cook - Egg went out

aturco · October 2018

Good morning,
Hope you all are enjoying your weekend. I put a 9 lb pork shoulder on the egg last night @ 8pm and had it stabilized at 250 when I went to bed around 11pm. Woke up this morning around 8 am and the egg had gone out. I re-lit the egg and am waiting for it to stabilize before I put the pork on again. I cannot seem to master or even get an overnight cook under my belt. It seems l need to be watching the egg and chasing my temp in order for a successful cook.
Should I just forget the egg at this point and go w/ the oven? Or try to finish in the egg, the internal temp was at 125 of the pork.

Thanks
Alex

FearlessTheEggNoob · October 2018

Get a flameboss or guru and you'll be set.

lkapigian · October 2018

Lack of air #1 as I assume you had plenty of fuel and it seems you were not running an overly low temp unless your Thermo is that far out of calibration. Check Calibration, confirm airflow, Egg On

aturco · October 2018

Thoughts on this...

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00A7F1BRY?pf_rd_p=a526cdf5-1d83-4a09-853e-0767afc685eb&pf_rd_r=YE90T6RQMWK6R0J0CKA8

EggbertGreenII · October 2018

I'm far from being an expert, but it seems to me that you are trying to go too low temperature-wise. While I used to try to cook at 230 degrees, I found that even that temp was on the edge of what my XL liked to burn and I had a couple episodes of the fire nearly going out, even using a DigiQ. The fire never did go out, but I think it was close. I now use 250 as my low and slow temp and have not had any problems at all and that higher temperature doesn't seem to make a whole lot of difference in cook time, it certainly makes no discernible difference in the pork taste and juciness.

derka123 · October 2018

How long was it stable at 250? For low and slow I like to get mine stable a few hours ahead of time.

Overnight I generally use a temperature control device.

You could fire it up early in the morning and turbo it as well, lots of people myself included have had success with that method.

GrillSgt · October 2018

I have found that any issue I have had with maintaining a low temp was due to lump size. Sometimes it’s from too much partially burned lump or from a lot of small chunks of lump from the bottom of the bag. I now make sure to distribute the small pieces better or open up a new bag for some larger pieces.

DoubleEgger · October 2018

I’d toss it.

gdenby · October 2018

I'm supposing you've already made some decision about how to procede.

For future reference, an Egg w. a dome at 250 if shut down may take 90 minutes to drop to below 140F, the upper end of the nominal danger zone. Food at 125 is hot enough that pathogens are not growing in number yet, and if taken above 140, should be pretty safe unless someone sneezes on them.

If you are chasing temps up and down, you still are not quite in control. It took me about 6 mo.s to feel confident enough to do an all-nighter. I was really bad about chasing temps.

250F should be good over night. Below that, the fire is so small, it may not spread from one piece of lump to the next. Understand that the average home oven continuously fluctuates up and down all the time. The temperature setting is just an average.

The most common cause of the fire going out is that it burns straight down the center, leaving 80% unkindled. Some people w. controllers have reported this problem, so a controller is not completely reliable.

For low temps, I always light in 3 places, because I've seen single places go out after an hour or so.

FWIW, I've had temperature creep up far more often than fall. I've gone to bed w. dome 250F, and woke up to find dome at 300, and needing to hold the pork for 6 hours.

aturco · October 2018

Toss it...huh?
Got it back on the egg stabilized @ 250 and doing just fine.

aturco · October 2018

hmmm are you saying that the piece of meat can potentially unsafe?
Thanks for your suggestions!

Overnight Cook - Egg went out

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