Cooking The Weber Covered Way.....recovery time

[1buckie]

I ran across a thread @ BBQ Bretheren that contained a fellow tracking a cookup of MOINK balls..........
the interesting thing, while using a short snake setup on his Performer, is that he also had a BBQ Guru Cyber-Q hooked up to monitor a low heat cookup....

I contacted Allan (exprmntal from Wichita, KS) & asked to use the resulting graph to demonstrate the incredible recovery time of a Weber Kettle................




These are small time frames of having the lid off, but look at the re-coup.....3 minutes off, three minutes back to temp....this is something I've noticed a lot; the kettle is much faster at recovery than most any other kind of cooker....that old adage "If you're Lookin', You Ain't Cookin' just isn't AS TRUE in the case of "Covered, damper-controlled cooking.....IF YOU PLEASE !!!"
Personally, I don't use much in the way of electronics & sometimes I feel they confuse people a bit more than they help, but this particular application really stuck a chord with me...........

Not bashing here, just noticing questions & problems that come up & the mental stance some folks will take trying to get the cooker to behave in certain ways, i.e. : too tight of a temp control, running too low of heat when it may just be more expeditious to allow the machine to run where it wants & perhaps just set in less fuel to use.......

I had a great conversation on the phone w/ MacEggs (Mark) from Canada a week or so ago & at one point we were talking long, low cooks & I told him a lot of the time I don't even notice where the vents are...just put it on & start cooking & maybe noodle with it later.....yeah, I goof up some, but heck, I don't have too much more hair to lose from worryin' !!!!

Allan was maybe going to try & get some more information in a setup like this in the future.....I know it's a bit of work, but we talked about the idea of seeing the effect of some longer times with the lid off & such....will be interesting to see if he gets a chance on this............

[mhiszem]

That's interesting, being an engineer I love seeing data to back up people's theories.


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[MacEggs]

Yes, I enjoyed that conversation.

Like I told you, I don't really bother to know the temperature anymore. I do know that it's hot enough to cook meat. 

[addicted-to-smoke]

Interesting that 3-minutes-off for the lid isn't a meaningful penalty. I might have thought otherwise. But it's a good omen for when you need to add more charcoal to a longer cook, even if you have to remove the cooking grate completely to do it.

In my limited experience I try to notice what I'd describe as "trends," and it's my belief that any thermometer is a tool used to build a brain-library of knowledge.

Trends: My dad's '05 Performer holds heat well and can easily get crazy hot. I think I posted a picture of early summer when the lid thermo wasn't just pegged but pointed at 6:00 ... After the cook, it'll cool down rapidly and be amazingly cool to the touch even in sunlight. My '92 Performer, showing no obvious signs of air leakage, sometimes struggles to get really hot and it'll NOT cool down quickly. I always have to wait until morning to replace the vinyl cover. That said, it doesn't seem to waste charcoal.

Both have functionally-tight OTS blades and lid dampers, and if anything, my dad's Performer has LESS gunk around the bowl/lid for "sealing."

[MacEggs]

it's my belief that any thermometer is a tool used to build a brain-library of knowledge.

I like that!  That's pretty much been my experience as well.   

[1buckie]

That's interesting, being an engineer I love seeing data to back up people's theories.

Yes, it really sort of affirmed something that's not so much a theory with me....after lifting lids thousands of times over 3+ decades....I already knew they recover quick.....

Even unloading the whole grate with food to add in bean pans & noodle coals doesn't have much effect........basic 'up to temp' at the start has always been right about 20 minutes for me & a major drop with the lid off seems like it has to even be less than that because the bell is already heated from burning coals, the meat (if a large chunk) is holding heat all by itself & the cubic volume of a standard kettle just ain't that big.......guess this last part is kinda theoretical......

But doing this is not something I even get a little nervous about :





Adding to the charcoal, setting in beans, rotating the grate around, they have a bit of an effect, just glad it's scientifically confirmed that's it's not a big deal......


As far as cool down after shut down....that's where it does get a little mysterious, for me.............

[G$]

Thanks for sharing buckie.  I implore people to run the same graph on their indoor oven if they have the technology.  The results may surprise them.

[mhiszem]

Would love to see the comparison to an indoor oven. They are notoriously inaccurate and the cycle time makes it difficult to control the temperature.


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[G$]

Would love to see the comparison to an indoor oven. They are notoriously inaccurate and the cycle time makes it difficult to control the temperature.


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I will go find the post I did on it a few years ago.

[G$]

This is a stokerlog graph that I did several years ago of my oven set to 250, (and then ramped up as noted to 300).  Also included, and noted, is the part where I "opened the oven door" to sort of replicate taking the lid off the cooker.

At the time not everyone got it, but the point is, your "baseline" for temperature stability  may not be as accurate or constant as you think, and kvetching over the minor fluctuations inherent in Weber Covered Cooking (if you please!) is largely a an exercise in windmill tilting.

[1buckie]

 That's great, G$ !!!!!

according to that, I can run a Weber WAY, WAY tighter than that weird box in the kitchen !!!!


I get what you're saying about fretting over temp flux.....the thing I was happy most about here was the recoup time.....seemed real good to me &  reaffirmed direct experience......

[Craig]

Thanks for posting this Ken!