Doing Pork Belly Burnt Ends today. I have been wanting to ask this for a while. Does anyone else have trouble controlling, actually maintaining, their BGE temps. Have had my BGE for 10+ years, seems like early on I could put the dome temps wherever I wanted. Last few years cannot keep temps at 250 or below and they continiously tend to creep up to 300 or more! Replaced the Fire Box this year, it had a crack that just kept growing and I thought that was the problem, no such luck. Do I need to replace my bottom vent? I have an after market top cap that is super adjustable. I can shut the air totally OFF and I still temperature creep! What to do? OB knows **** so this is the place to ask!

Similar issues over the years. Pork burnt ends don't take all that long to make, so look as using significantly less lump. Just a small pile. Start it off SLOW and choke it down soon as temps flare (use a digital thermometer). Hard to bring temps down once they spike. Then there's the tried/true options: foil pan filled with water, juice, beer, etc.

Mark Fairchild said:

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Doing Pork Belly Burnt Ends today. I have been wanting to ask this for a while. Does anyone else have trouble controlling, actually maintaining, their BGE temps. Have had my BGE for 10+ years, seems like early on I could put the dome temps wherever I wanted. Last few years cannot keep temps at 250 or below and they continiously tend to creep up to 300 or more! Replaced the Fire Box this year, it had a crack that just kept growing and I thought that was the problem, no such luck. Do I need to replace my bottom vent? I have an after market top cap that is super adjustable. I can shut the air totally OFF and I still temperature creep! What to do? OB knows **** so this is the place to ask!

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Get a fan and controller, a basic setup is fairly cheap and it will allow you to maintain any temperature you set. I own a CyberQ from BBQGuru and I love it. You will wonder how you ever lived without it after you use it.

It's leaking air. Suspect gasket

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I can shut the air totally OFF and I still temperature creep! What to do? OB knows **** so this is the place to ask!

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What do you mean by creep? You can shut the air off and because a BGE is so insulated it can continue to drift up if it was already headed in that direction. If it's still headed up in an hour with both vents closed then you probably do have an issue with air leaking in. I have a pretty jacked up gasket on my Kamado Joe and I don't have any issues with managing the temp using a controller. I don't have any cracks so if air is getting in that way I guess it could cause issues. How bad is the crack?


Edit: I guess I should add that replacing the gasket is not a terrible idea and it is an obvious inexpensive next troubleshooting step (I would imagine that replacing the firebox was not cheap) but I would try other things before I even considered replacing the top cap and bottom vent. I find it hard to believe that either of those items would cause your issues.

For example, when I first add wood to my fire I see smoke leaking from the top cap, gasket, and the bottom vent so these are never super tightly sealed and I can dial in a temp lower than 200 degrees.

AggieChemist said:

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It's leaking air. Suspect gasket

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My thoughts as well.

normaleagle05 said:

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AggieChemist said:

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It's leaking air. Suspect gasket

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My thoughts as well.

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Get your own.

This

Thinking them now. Satisfying...thanks for the life pointer.

Here is my recommendation. I use the below process to start my fire. I realize you have been doing this for 10 years so you may have more experience than me but figured I would share my process just to see how it compares to what you are doing. Also, someone will probably tell me I'm an idiot and could give me some ideas on what I am doing wrong.

• If you don't already own one buy a fan and controller it's probably 200-300 bucks depending on how fancy you want to go.
• Connect the fan and controller and dial in 200 degrees
• Fill firebox with lump amount depends on the length of your cook
• Fill Webber style chimney with lump
• Light chimney with 6-8 pages of the newspaper (I use the Times-Picayune but Chronicle should do)
• Do not let the lump sit in the chimney very long. If all the lump is fully grey or red it's already too hot. About 1/3 or less of the lump needs to be lit.
• Pour hot coals in the egg and close the lid.
• Let the controller bring the temp up to 200 it may slightly overshoot depending how much lump was lit when you dumped above
• Once the temp normalizes at 200 up the temp to 250 and let the controller bring up the temp to 250

• As you are probably already aware if you go way over for some reason close both vents and fire up the crockpot if you are in a hurry. The only reason I have ever overshot the temp using the process above is when I accidentally forgot to put the pit probe back in the egg and the fan ran 100% trying to heat up my entire back yard.

• (I forgot to mention to put the wood you are going to use to smoke in when you pour in the hot coals and you will be pretty much ready to cook when you get to 250).

AggieChemist said:

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It's leaking air. Suspect gasket

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Needs a new gasket was my immediate thought as well. Get a Nomex one instead of felt.

Agree with the gasket posts. I have a DigiQ and just bought a Smobot. Much prefer the Smobot.

My recommendation is to get a pellet grill.