I picked up a nice, used Ranch a few weeks back but haven't had a ton of time to use it yet. But yesterday I decided to play around a bit.
One thing that concerned me was if I set up a snake on one side of the kettle would the temperature be fairly steady across the expanse of the grate or would the far end of the grate be much cooler than the rest of the kettle. The first time I cooked on it I set up a snake on each side and put the meat in the middle which worked great. But what about just one snake on one side?
Well, here is what I found (yeah, I know I need to clean this thing up a bit).
I started out with a 2x2 snake that was about 12 briquettes long. I dumped about 30 lit coals on the end and let her run with three air probes set up like this and the vents wide open:
One probe was fairly close to the snake, one in the middle of the grate, and one on the far end. After 30 minutes the probe by the snake was 225, the one in the middle was 203, and the one on the far end was 206.
The probe by the snake was maybe a bit too close so of course it was going to be hotter but I was pretty surprised the middle of the grate and the far end were very close in temperature. After an hour they were at 245, 218, and 216. After 90 minutes they were at 235, 215, and 208.
I know that 215 is a bit too low overall but if I were to build a bigger snake that would take care of that problem. Today I did a 2x3 snake and had no problem getting to 225 (smoked 30 pounds of bacon on it today). But I wasn't going for overall temperature in this test. I just wanted to see the variance across the grate.
Overall it was pretty cool to see the temps fairly consistent across the whole grate. I was expecting a much bigger variance. I have some more tests I want to do when I get a chance but this was promising.
One thing that concerned me was if I set up a snake on one side of the kettle would the temperature be fairly steady across the expanse of the grate or would the far end of the grate be much cooler than the rest of the kettle. The first time I cooked on it I set up a snake on each side and put the meat in the middle which worked great. But what about just one snake on one side?
Well, here is what I found (yeah, I know I need to clean this thing up a bit).
I started out with a 2x2 snake that was about 12 briquettes long. I dumped about 30 lit coals on the end and let her run with three air probes set up like this and the vents wide open:
One probe was fairly close to the snake, one in the middle of the grate, and one on the far end. After 30 minutes the probe by the snake was 225, the one in the middle was 203, and the one on the far end was 206.
The probe by the snake was maybe a bit too close so of course it was going to be hotter but I was pretty surprised the middle of the grate and the far end were very close in temperature. After an hour they were at 245, 218, and 216. After 90 minutes they were at 235, 215, and 208.
I know that 215 is a bit too low overall but if I were to build a bigger snake that would take care of that problem. Today I did a 2x3 snake and had no problem getting to 225 (smoked 30 pounds of bacon on it today). But I wasn't going for overall temperature in this test. I just wanted to see the variance across the grate.
Overall it was pretty cool to see the temps fairly consistent across the whole grate. I was expecting a much bigger variance. I have some more tests I want to do when I get a chance but this was promising.
