For lighting procedure:
1. Fill
charcoal chimney with charcoal
2. light with 2 or three sheets of newspaper underneath
3. allow coals to grey over and get glowing orange (45 mins to hour 15mins)
4. I put some unlit charcoal in the basket then dump my lit chimney into the basket
5. I allow the main chamber and firebox to be open for about 2 minutes then close them and keep the smoke stack open all the way and the firebox damper open all the way.
5.5. I've got a water pan under the grates on my "baffle" nearest to the firebox.
6. I monitor the temp with a digital probe through a sweet potato at grate level and once it's up to temp (sometimes 45min to an hour+) I open it up and put my goodies on the grates.
7. I plop myself near the firebox so that I can tap the damper closed as it gets too high and open as it gets too low. I find that I can get it all the way up to 250 but the temp fluctuates pretty easily. It can come up from 215 to 240 in less than a minute or so then can drop way down in 30 seconds if I'm not watching it. It just wont hold at an appropriate temp. Also temps are tremendously different on both sides of the main chamber anything I can do that I'm not already doing to maybe help that??
Thanks for your help everyone!! I know this has been on here about 8 million times but its different for everyone I suppose.
Quote:
I will try my next time around without the grate in there period and see what happens. Thanks Jck. What do you think about fire bricks in the main chamber to retain heat?
IMHO you do not need fire bricks, they will do nothing for you. I see you just turned the cook chamber charcoal grate upside down, it needs to be elevated to allow proper airflow in the cooking chamber. Take the two cast iron
grill grates that came with the firebox and place them in the cooking chamber to raise the inverted chacoal grate, this will take care of the airflow problem and you should see temps in the cooking chamber rise to the level you want them to be in 10 minutes or so.
You can buy wood stove door gasket to seal the lid on the cooking chamber.
One thing that bothers me is about the CG mods is the recommendation to extend the chimney down to grate level, professional pit builders do not do this, they keep the exhaust above the cooking grate. IMHO you should extend it to about 4" above the cooking grate for better airflow.
It has been my experience that a water pan is unnecessecary in the
Chargriller, it sucks up heat energy for little or no return. I find that when cooking on the CG I have no problem keeping the meat from drying out, it is especially good in keeping chicken very juicy.
The problem you are having with holding "appropriate" cooking temp is partly because you have a CG and partly because of what you have read on the forums. The CG is an offset and as such tends to need more babysitting than other types of cookers, like the
WSM or a UDS. IMHO this is part of the fun of BBQ. Despite what you read about the magic number of 225°, "low and slow"
encompasses a range of temps that end somewhere north of 300°. Some meats benefit from lower temps, some from higher. I find with the CG(using charcoal) that if I set an upper limit of say 280° and close the air intake the temps will settle back to between 240°-255° and stay in that range. This procedure is repeated everytime you add charcoal.
I use the different temps across the grate to my advantage, ribs on the far end , chicken in the middle and sausage or wings nearest the firebox to cook quickly.
Lastly, you do not mention whether you are using lump charcoal or briquettes, briquettes will cause too much ash build up and restrict airflow making it difficult to keep your temps up, always use lump charcoal.
