acquasanta Posted March 10, 2007 Report Share Posted March 10, 2007 One question I haven't seen asked is can you burn hardwood in the kk? I currently have a big green egg and use hardwood only. It may be that I don't do enough grilling with charcoal, but I heat with wood and have about 30 acres of woodlot, so it seems a waste to have to by charcoal. I am just concerned about damaging the ceramics with such high heat. I broke my thermometer on the BGE with temps off the charts and have had cracks on the inner rings. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ThreeDJ16 Posted March 10, 2007 Report Share Posted March 10, 2007 Re: Hardwood fuel One question I haven't seen asked is can you burn hardwood in the kk? I currently have a big green egg and use hardwood only. It may be that I don't do enough grilling with charcoal' date=' but I heat with wood and have about 30 acres of woodlot, so it seems a waste to have to by charcoal. I am just concerned about damaging the ceramics with such high heat. I broke my thermometer on the BGE with temps off the charts and have had cracks on the inner rings.[/b'] Curious, are you burning your hardwood down to coals in the BGE open, then closing it off? -=Jasen=- Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
acquasanta Posted March 10, 2007 Author Report Share Posted March 10, 2007 hardwood No, I start a small fire and when I have a steady flame, I add larger pieces of hardwood and close the lid, with about half of the air vent open. I can control the temp to some degree, but I usually have flames shooting out the top of the exaust. After about 1 hour, I have a beautiful bed of coals and cook over that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ThreeDJ16 Posted March 10, 2007 Report Share Posted March 10, 2007 Re: hardwood No' date=' I start a small fire and when I have a steady flame, I add larger pieces of hardwood and close the lid, with about half of the air vent open. I can control the temp to some degree, but I usually have flames shooting out the top of the exaust. After about 1 hour, I have a beautiful bed of coals and cook over that.[/quote'] Yeah, I am gonna say that is not a good idea with either grill to have flames shooting out of the top vent for that long. Your well over 1000 degrees for that time period. Would it be too much trouble doing the fire pit off to the side of the cooker to burn off the wood, then transfer them to the cooker? Once you see how efficient the KK is with charcoal (natural lump), you would not really care any more about using hard wood anyway. -=Jasen=- Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
acquasanta Posted March 10, 2007 Author Report Share Posted March 10, 2007 Jason that is a really good idea, burning wood off to the side, outside the cooker. Maybe I could burn the wood in the BGE and then throw the coals in the KK. Or maybe that is just a huge pain in the arse and I should just suck it up and use charcoal. When using charcoal, does it really heat up the KK quickly? I am not going to keep asking you 20 questions. Thanks for your responses. Peter Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ThreeDJ16 Posted March 11, 2007 Report Share Posted March 11, 2007 Jason that is a really good idea' date=' burning wood off to the side, outside the cooker. Maybe I could burn the wood in the BGE and then throw the coals in the KK. Or maybe that is just a huge pain in the arse and I should just suck it up and use charcoal. When using charcoal, does it really heat up the KK quickly? I am not going to keep asking you 20 questions. Thanks for your responses. Peter[/quote'] Hey, questions are welcome here; that is what the forum is for. You will have no issues getting the grills up to temps using natural lump charcoal very quickly. It is also not very expensive either. I pay about $5.49 for a 10 lb bag of Royal Oak (about the same size as 20lbs of brickets since it is much lighter) that lasts me many cooks from Walmart - very little hassles. Since natural lump can be used immmediately instead of having to burn off like brickets and you can put them out and relight, it does last much longer. Very easy to use since you can use a chimney starter, fire starters wedges or just a propane torch to light them. -=Jasen=- And of course, you must check out The Naked Whiz web site for all things charcoal - http://www.nakedwhiz.com/ceramic.htm Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
leejp Posted March 11, 2007 Report Share Posted March 11, 2007 Maybe 2 uses? I could see for low and slow throwing in several sizable chunks and filling the gaps with a small amount of lump but this might make temperature control rather difficult as I've found the smaller bits of lump make for better low and slow. A more practical use might for cleaning the cooker. A couple of logs might take place of a load of lump. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TheNakedWhiz Posted March 11, 2007 Report Share Posted March 11, 2007 I tried cooking at 400 degrees using wood chunks and a guru. It wouldn't work at 400 degrees. If the wood ignited, the temperature soared. The guru shut down and the temperature plummeted and the wood began smoking like you wouldn't believe. Perhaps you could have found a happy vent setting, but if the flames aren't burning you are generating huge amounts of smoke. And then there was the creosote. The daisy wheel got creosoted on real good. I had a time getting it off. The inside of the dome was also coated with creosote. If you want to use wood coals, you should probably do it like they did it in the old days, preburning the wood in one location and shoveling the coals into the cooker when they are ready. Also, if you have all that wood, I'd suggest calling Shotgun Fred at BBQ Guru and tell him to get his charcoal making machine on the market. Apparently he keeps tweaking it and putting off announcing it. It supposedly is clean enough to use it in your backyard without arousing too much suspicion from the neighbors. I think he said it will produce 20 pounds of charcoal in a batch. It will run either off of propane or burning wood. I haven't seen it, just had it described to me, but it sounds interesting! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ThreeDJ16 Posted March 11, 2007 Report Share Posted March 11, 2007 Hehe, that is funny Whizzy, I had already PMed him about making his own charcoal. Well, you know what they say about great minds? Hell, I don't know since there aren't any around here, but maybe someone will tell us? hehe -=Jasen=- Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
acquasanta Posted March 12, 2007 Author Report Share Posted March 12, 2007 Sucess with charcoal Well tonight I had a fish to cook....tuna steak, looking mouthwatering without doing anything to it. I came home lit the BG egg with wood shavings and added a few large handfulls of lump charcoal. I had a birthday party to go to, so instead of indulging in greasy pizza, decided to wait until I got home to grill the tuna and savour it over a bed of shaved carrotts and arrugala...I love shaving things. Well to my surprise after 3 hours of burning, the coals were still decent enough to cook my fish. I have to say, I am quite impressed with using charcoal, that bag had been in my garage since I bought the BGE a few years ago. So from now on charcoal it is. Oh by the way, I have contacted Dennis about buying a KK. Maybe next time I cook a fish it will be on a devilishly handsome white kkk mon, I mean blue tiled OTB KK. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
