PBC calibration tests

[phoccer]

Woah. I was just considering getting a bag of those as I'm all out of charcoal at the moment. I'll definitely have to give them a try.

[fzxdoc]

Wow, thanks for that!

Kathryn

[Polarbear777]

Just updated the initial plot. I tried B&B char logs and got a 28 hour run at 225F (no food test, just like the others in the same plot)

[Anonymouslemming]

Brilliant - thanks. That seems within my abilities

[fillirican]

Polarbear777 great information! Thank you very much. I just received my PBJ yesterday and will probably do a cook tonight. If I do, I'll share my Fireboard data too.

[Polarbear777]

Just drilled a 1” hole and mounted the pit viper fan with their Weber mount adapter. Then blocked the main stock intake so the fan has full control.
I put the fan intake at the same height as the stock intake, about 90 degrees away.

[Anonymouslemming]

Calibration tests with no food to characterize settings.
All using a level basket of KBB, and subset of that ignited by PBC chimney and lid clamped on immediately.

I’m sure things will change with food load, but gives an idea how settings may affect things. Ambient temp was 30-40F.
Altitude is sea level.
Temperature at cook is either above 200 or above 300 (when it’s high enough to start cooking)

Apologies if I’ve missed another link but I really want to hook my digi q up if I get one of these. How did you do it ?

thanks,

[Butchman]

I’d choose the green line! That’s my setting btw.

[Butchman]

There ya go getting all scientific and such! Don’t you know the PBC is a magic black drum and some things science just can’t explain! Just kidding these graphs are interesting.

[Polarbear777]

When I said it would behave differently with food as a heat sink, I was right. Here is a double chicken cook with the fan control set to 350F. It struggled to stay above 320F and you can see when I pulled the chickens out that the barrel easily went to 350 and stayed there.

The chickens ended up great btw.

[Polarbear777]

I haven’t noticed it being very specific as long as I toss lit coals in there. I use their small chimney, dump it in and lid on immediately for all the graphs above, including the stock non-fan settings.

I’ve never had to wait with the lid off when using a chimney, only when I tried to get cute and use just the starter cubes.

[phoccer]

Yeah, I've discovered the initial lighting technique used is KEY for me to get a good start. I use Kingsford Pro so it's 30-40 cubes for 12 minutes in the chimney, dump on the rest of the basket, leave the lid off for 10 minutes, load it up and go. That usually results in a good spike to 425ish and then settles down in the range I want.

[Polarbear777]

Another pro tip for this thread. Even with the open lid detection off you have to watch it.

The graph is me attempting to start the PBC with just a couple Weber cubes in the box and with the fan set to 300F. I figured it has to light with forced air right? Well you can see where the barrel got over 300, the fan turns off and in the time it took me to manually set the fan (under a minute) I lost full ignition.

After several minutes, opened the lid, re-lit, manual fan still at 100%, waited about 15 minutes or so, lid on and rolling.

Much faster to just use a chimney, don’t try to get too lazy.

I do the cube start all the time in the pk360, but the barrel is a different animal.

[Polarbear777]

Right, and I don’t know if insulation would buy you a ton of extra time vs the controller. Yo also don’t want the fire too low or your smoke quality suffers. I’d do an A/B insulation and non-insulation run, but now that I’m done with my mods, I’m just going to make food for a while :-)

[Polarbear777]

I hate dealing with fabric covers and they trap moisture. My custom hacked metal covers didn’t budge in 50 mph winds.