Today's rust update (I'll try to.do these once a week or less once the initial patina is formed and then at some point do monthly or quarterly or even only semi-annual if there's no obvious or major changes)
Anyway at least with this dew the top swirlys aren't visible, but the front fingerprints and side swirlys are).
First whole chicken test cook, once again the wind picked up right when I was gonna cook so lots of minor adjustments throughout. I had intended to cook at 350ish, but it's also really hard to get a probe in the same zone as the bird. Due to the wind I started low and gradually opened front vents, if it started moving up too fast I gave a few.minutes of the rear vent at half open. It responds fairly quick to front vent adjustments but very quick to rear vent adjustments.
Anyway, all things considered I'm happy with the bird. If it's windy on my next bird cook I'm gonna try without the deflector. Once again skin isn't rubbery but it's not perfect crispy, but it spent half the cook under 300 and only about 5 minutes at 380 so that's to be expected.
The biggest lesson today is that using a PBC bird hanger works great BUT the way the HB hanger sits I did get a couple elbow burns trying to get the bird out. I think the trick will be removing the HB hanger with the bird on it, lay bird on citting board, THEN remove the bird hanger.
Also my plan for the Kent Rollins logo seems to be working. The thought is it will rust good all around and then in a week or two I'll remove the logo and it will rust up but leave a faint outline...
Also, I needed a few specialty tools. Specifically a coal rake and a Dutch oven lid tool that I believe will work as a grate tool. The MAK was at capacity on tool hooks and HB only sells stainless shelves and hooks for the RN. So I nabbed these on Amazon for dirt cheap.
I also need to grab some fire bricks to rest the ashpan and firebox on at some point.
I'm hoping for a not windy day so I can start dialing in vent settings to share, need to buy more meat though... then again there's a new Mexican meat market that just opened very near my house I've been wanting an excuse to check out so...
Dutch oven tool came in today, works almost exactly like I planned. Might get a longer one down the road but I think woth gloves on it will be fine for the lower grates.
MAK 2 Star pellet
Big Green Egg
Fuego gasser
Pitboss ceramic griddle
Eastman Outdoors wok burner
Ooni 16 pizza oven
Cast iron chimenea with pizza steel
Breeo smokeless fire pit, with Titan rotisserie and Titan Santa Maria style adjustable grate
Oklahoma Joe Bronco
The quick pace of rusting is interesting to me. I have a Breeo smokeless fire pit, about 3 years now, in corten steel. On covered patio, no cover on pit. Just now in the last year it is developing some patina. I guess it is the difference between a desert and humid east coast.
yakima I did... I can't fault her for having concerns about a $1K purchase rusting the first day even with me explaining it. I felt the same way when they first released the Kent Rollins Bertha grill and it was discussed here.
I have been married 38 years. With the passage of time things get blurred. When I was into firearms, it helped to have a locked room "for security". And much easier to stash another long or hand gun. If questioned walking in with a cased gun, "Oh, I wanted Don, the local gun dealer, to look it over." Or, "I traded for it", neglecting to mention that I may have traded cash.
The grills are obviously obvious. But much of my stuff was deeply discounted; sales, craigslist, neighbors, etc..
Not really a significant change in the rust but we're at the 1 week mark since the grill left OK and started its journey. I think the last shot is kinda cool, the rust looks textured but it's nearly smooth to the touch.
SNS Deluxe
Cheaptex (Vortex knock-off)
Weber charcoal rotisserie (turkey making machine)
Weber charcoal baskets (only use with the turkey making machine)
Steelmade Flattop (griddle attachment for gasser)
Thermoworks Smoke
PartyQ
I was looking at the roughneck earlier this year before I got the PBX. But the price and the plethora of help here on AR lured me to the PBX. I'll be following this thread, so let us know how it works out for you.
Love the rusted look too. Damn, wish I could have showed this to my wife before getting the PBX, she loves the 'rustic' look.
I looked at the PBX and Bronco Pro, the Bronco Pro got eliminated due to weight. I ultimately decided on the Roughneck because it has a few more capabilities than a standard barrel cooker but I can still get it in the back of my truck by myself. The good thing is if you ever decide to sell your PBX you should be able to recoup a decent amount towards a Roughneck or whatever
Well at least in perfect weather for a short cook I've got this dialed in. Cooked this tender butt thing for about an hour and a half holding mainly at 210ish, weather forecast bumped the rain sooner so I ramped things up for the last 30 minutes.
I didnt try until almost the end but it seems the fastest way to get temp up with all vents open is to unlatch (but don't remove the latch) on the firebox door and to unlatch the lid. Gives it more intake and exhaust flow without letting much heat out. Might even crack the lid a hair more with some tongs or something the next time I do a bird to see if it acts like cracking the lid on a PBC.
The thing I don't like about using the rear vent as the probe port is I kinda want to see how fast the temp drops when you shut everything. Cant close the exhaust vent enough to quickly choke the coals with probe wires in. I could run the probes under the lid but I'm not familiar with how lavalock would or would not get deformed?
Debated making a new thread for this gif, but I don't wanna spam up the place... but this is really cool.
My grill mat is holding water, the deck lighting is at the perfect angle, and theres still rain slowly coming down. Its the perfect everything for this.
Started a pork butt yesterday afternoon. Intent was to keep it between 275 and 325 without the deflector. Started low and gradually adjusted vents until I was at 310, that did great for about 2 hours, then mother nature intervened and it was a struggle to keep things about 225 without fully opening the vents and risking overshooting my desired cook temp.
Ended up opening everything and throwing the deflector in which kept grate temps from exceeding 300. I got a 10 minute window of no rain so wrapped in foil and threw in the oven overnight. Max temp on the pork was 148 I was hoping to get into the stall before moving the meat to the oven but oh well.. I did average 305 over that 6 hour period so I'll still call that a success.
So lesson learned, the grill can handle wind... but rain not so much. At least with the coals in the box with a U pattern instead of a solid full bed of coals.
ecowper I did obviously expect some effect from the rain, but I didn't expect it to completely cripple the cooker. Some of that may be due to me not fully loading the firebox but I just cleaned things up and there was only a handful of charcoal left so it did try. I might have to keep the PKGO as a backup to the MAK on a generator for hurricanes until we build a covered porch/deck (thankfully that's the next project after the kitchen counter)
The designs on the top are gone other than the KR spot which I'm gonna let rust up before continuing to put the logo up there. Considering the dew sits there I wasn't surprised the pattern is gone, but I am sad how uniform it is. I really enjoyed some of the patterns earlier in the process.
The sides kinda retained the wet rag swirls, especially on the left side.
The front finger and hand prints are doing what I wanted with different levels of rust still visible.
The back had nothing done but is not forming a rust layer as well as the rest of the grill.
Every day I inspect the grill to look for obvious changes, it's kinda enjoyable to do so in a weird way
I too was confused by it back when another cor-ten steel cooker was released. But basically it's a steel designed to rust, the rust forms a protective exterior coating. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weathering_steel
Tried running with some fire brick today. I suspected I'd run into issues with the fat coal spots at each turn with the fire brick not being long enough, but it wasn't too bad. There's a wood chunk spaced about a fist width apart for the whole run und the lump. Cook started at 0830, it was overcast and a light swirling breeze.
So we started off with a major oopsie. My fireboard probe kicked the bucket, thankfully right off the bat vs mid cook. Swapped to a MAK probe and held 220-228 for an hour solid, but then I was starting to question the MAK probe even though I tested all probes last weekend. Popped the lid to verify we were indeed already over 100F IT on the meat at 10am, I did move the probe at this point too.
With the influx of air, I closed all 3 vents just a hair and in 20 minutes it was almost back to 225 so I moved things back to the original setting and it hummed along until about noon when the sun came out and the burn hit the first wide turn. I tried to dial it in but I didn't want to kill the fire so ultimately I threw the deflector in.
That brought things back to the 220 zone, with more coals going now and the sun I just let it ride between 225 and 275 until 3pm when I wanted to eat before 8pm cracked everything a bit to try and hold 265 and it did for most of the cook.
Interestingly, that coal in the top left is all that's burning right now at 8:30 pm after opening the vents wide for the last few hours to burn it all off. It's still about 160 degrees. So if I can get some longer fire brick or maybe try a fat U shape next time I think I can maybe get 16ish hours at 225 without having to get a fan for my fireboard. Not that I'll ever really use this over night, the MAK can do that more reliably and for less money. But I have a thing, I wanna master the thing even if I'll never do whatever techniques more than a few times just to say I did.
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