tony b

Ditto MacKenzie's advice. No deflector needed and at least an hour to heat soak the stone once you get to temperature.

I had to bend the handles back on mine to get Dennis' pizza stone to fit. Used a rubber mallet. One of them actually broke off - no harm, no foul in my book. Made things even easier and I don't use the handles to pick it up anyway when it's on the grill, as it's hard to get a heavy glove through the handle.

HURRAY! But -- I'm totally shocked that your first cook wasn't Suya Pepper skewers!?!

Reiterating what others have said and add a thought or 2: 1) The fan has an adjustable damper, I usually run my fan for lo & slo at 50% open. That way when the fan isn't running, you don't suck in too much air. Keep the top vent almost closed, the fan will force the air out. If you see smoke, you're fine. 2) Push on the 4 corners of your lower vent plate with the door as snug as you can get it. If it moves at all, you need to tighten up the door a tad. Do NOT bend the rods on the door, but stick a long screwdriver into the tubes from the inside and bend the tube AWAY from the corner that's loose. Reinsert the door and check it again. You might have to do a couple of tweaks to get it solid. As others have said, check the rear door as well. Highly recommend sealing it up if you never use it. 3) Per MacKenzie, remove the bung to insert the probes and find the slit in the bung for the wires. I've had to straighten my angled probes to fit - easy, peasy, just bend slowly/gently. 4) Haven't used the heavy diffuser in years. Takes too long to heat up. Use either the drip pan or aluminum foil on the lower grate. 5) Never had this issue, so no advice on that one. Good luck and post pics of these cooks you're doing!

A win-win indeed! Congrats to both of you!

Par for the course! Haven't reached out to friends and family yet, but the winning ticket was sold in SC in a suburb of my hometown. Maybe someone I know was the big winner??

OK, lesson learned. After direct grilling of the fatty lamb ribs, they dripped so much grease onto my charcoal, that I've been having issues with both temperature control and lots of smoke production in subsequent cooks. Next time, I'll put just enough charcoal in the basket to do the ribs and not fill it up, like normal. Here's a pic of tonight's cook (Jerk Chicken thighs). Every time that I opened the lid to flip the chicken, this happened! The good news - it didn't impact the flavor of the chicken. Yes, there's a plated picture - chicken with Jamaican curry rice and a nice side salad. The wine was a very nice Viognier that I picked up at Trader Joe's last week.

Not on that day, for sure! But, I do cook on mine in the winter, except for the brutal days when the windchill is below zero! (That would be in Fahrenheit here - LOL!) Or, in the freezing rain/sleet. I will cook when it's snowing, as long the ambient temps aren't too cold.

It's actually close to black powder, as it really does have granulated charcoal in it!

It's fun watching how crazy folks get when the pot gets this large. They don't seem to understand that the probability of winning doesn't change with the size of the pot, but it does increase the likelihood that they might have to share the winnings with someone else when this many folks are buying tickets like there's no tomorrow!

Great point about the bacon for the weave, Charles. That's what I normally do; use the "good" bacon for the stuffing. I imbedded a few of my own personal twists/tips, including that one, in the pdf file - fwiw.

Doesn't stop most of us, especially MacKenzie, who probably sees the most snow of anyone on the Forum. We can get our fair share here in Iowa, too!

@ckreef - I've observed that the temperature of the meat itself can have an effect on the ambient reading, as well, as it's only a inch or so away from the meat. The interesting thing is, during a rotisserie cook, the ambient temperature doesn't seem to bounce around as it rotates, so there must be a bit of a lag, or there's an averaging circuit in it to smooth out the reading.

Yeah, my first experience was getting a Coke in Germany and finding it had 2 small cubes in it - and this was at a McDonalds! I asked the lady at the counter if I could have more ice and she looked at me like I was from another planet!

Looks like something from an Aliens movie!

I think the graphs on this thing are so cool!

Oh, yeah!

Tekobo, you strike me as an old soul whose lived many fantastic lives.

Can't wait to hear how those turn out - Gunpowder, really??

@tekobo - meatloaf = a terrine by any other name, except the French would never sauce it with ketchup! It's usually made here with a mixture of proteins - commonly beef, pork and veal. You MUST try a Fattie (aka, The Baconator, Bacon Explosion) Here's the step-by-step instructions. It's kinda labor intensive, but it's AMAZING! bacon-explosion.pdf

Off to a great start!

I'm headed off to Baltimore in a couple of weeks and one of my planned stops there is to visit the Guinness brewery/taproom. The brewers make small batches of experimental stuff for the taproom. Should be great!

I had to go and check. No, it doesn't. Even looked inside the battery compartment.

I'm schizophrenic - I vac with the shop vac some days and I scoop from the top on others with a big feed scoop that I got at the farm supply store. It does double duty as my charcoal scoop, too.