Well I finally got the second mini put together. It's fun to have 2 going even with the winter chillI. Trying a few different things with the 2nd build. Including a new wind break home for my dueling minis.
My 12" planter cracked like I knew it would, so I had been using some large steel pie pans I had lying around. They work great to diffuse the smoke and catch drippings but with the full on winter temps I wanted something to help with the fluctuations. I went to a local metal supply shop and found a 12" wide 1/4" cold rolled steel disk, and a 10"wide 1/4" stainless disk in the scrap bins.
These work great at keep the temps leveled out. For my second pot I added bolts below the steamer ridge for the diffuser grate to ride a bit higher. I left my first pot with the grate on the very bottom, but I think it would work better if I could add the pot lid to the bottom. The Imusa lids just don't fit. Gotta work on that. Without the lid the grate and diffuser seem to limit the charcoals burn. So I may raise the grate in my first pot. It's nice to try different things.
Didn't do anything to the gold other than a charcoal basket and some eye bolt handles for the vents.
For now I'll use pot #1 on the gold base, for lower slower cooks.
I'm also trying out a couple different probe ports. Brass lamp parts in one and high heat grommet in the other.
I also added the 3/4" ball valve vents to the silver.
The thing gets hot now boy! The raised diffuser grate helped a lot for higher heat to. On a test run the other day I got up to 530f and was able to hold 470 for quite a while on a day it was 9f with 20 mph wind gusts. The gold went up to 330f and stabilized at 280f.
Did some meatloaf again last night. I can't believe my wife asked me to make it. She's always hated meat loaf until I did it a few weeks back. Now she wanted extra for lunches. I'll post up the recipe I used elsewhere. But a few pics here first.
The mini was looking out for me last night. I cooked one meat loaf and took it off and then put the second one on. The second one was getting close to temp when I fell asleep on the couch. Meat coma. I must have set the alarm wrong on the Igrill2 app. My wife woke me up 2 hours later and I knew I must have a burnt meat log on the deck. I then checked the temps on the I grill app. the meat was at 70f. The graph showed that while I slept, the loaf hit 163 and held that for about half an hour at which point the fire died and the mini and loaf cooled off to safe levels within the safety time zone. Lucky me, it was late so I didn't take pictures of the second loaf, but I will at lunch soon.
I'm hooked. I still need to make new legs, but I love these minis! My other smokers are looking sad and neglected covered in snow.
Bryan
