Should I sell my M and Mini to buy a MM?

minniemoh said:

fishlessman said:

i gave up on the small years ago,  was costing me too much beer and day light to get it up to temp. 6 beers in would get it up to roasting temps.  i gave it away, sits at a friends camp lakeside and it cooks me free food

I really only use my Small when I travel now. It fits nicely under my tonneau cover and has enough capacity for tailgating and small family gatherings. Trying to cook on it at home drives me nuts. Mine behaves exactly as you have described above and its associated beer cost is disproportionately large. When I travel with it, I am typically hanging out and don't really care about start-up time as much - otherwise I would part with it too.

I have also considered taking a Dremel to the base and installing the larger vent to see if it would help. A few times, I've also used an extended pipe on the top to try to increase the air draw for faster/hotter temps, but the limiting factor really seems to be the undersized lower vent.

you should really try the fire grate from your large egg in your small.  It changes everything you describe.  It took me getting a mini max to discover this.  

minniemoh said:

@cookingdude555 - I have an expanded stainless steel grate and KAB that I use at the same time in there too so there's a very large air gap all the way around the charcoal and lots of airflow capability from the bottom. Those changes improved performance a little bit but it's still very slow to come to temp. The only real remedy that I've found so far is to start it with a propane torch and blast it for a couple of minutes to really get it started.

I do have an expanded stainless grate for one of my L eggs - I'll give your suggestion a try sometime. One question for you though, doesn't the grate being so much higher in the fire box put more expansion stress on the fire box since it's resting on the sides rather than the lip at the bottom? It would seem that the fire box would be much more likely to crack.

@minniemoh, If you look at the mini max fire grate inside of its firebox (I dont have a picture here at work), it is sitting 'higher' in the firebox, simply because the firebox has the bottom cut off (not really, but when compared to the small...).  Ive done expanded metal in my small, had a small KAB in there, and also a high que for a small too.  They all helped, but none of them as much as getting a wider lump base across the portion of the egg where the lump meets air.  Other solutions open the air up underneath, but getting a wider grate provides a bigger area of lump that can consume air when its lit.  See this post for when I just stumbled on it, without actually trying to get it to high temps:

https://eggheadforum.com/discussion/1206536/my-small-is-a-mini-max-cross-dresser

Ultimately, the small and mini max suffer from using the same air inlet as the mini.  But distributing the lump in a more horizontal instead of vertical fashion gives the small (with a mini max or large fire grate) and mini max grilling legs.  Hope this helps.

garthb4903 said:

@Jstroke another good question, I like (don't love) the searing ability of the M, the grid space on the mini seems just a tad too small.  My thought was the MM would have better searing than the M with a tad more grid space...

If you are not getting the sear you like out of your Medium then you are not starting with enough lump. Fill it up closer to the top of the fire ring. Same goes with the Large BGE. Fire will be leaping up through the cooking grate.

"My thought was the MM would have better searing than the M with a tad more grid space..."

Grid space on the Medium is larger than the Mini Max. Medium is 15" and Mini Max and Small are 13". Mini being the smallest cooking grid size at 10" or so depending on year built.