Welcome!

**Smocalypse** · March 4, 2017, 09:54 PM

First smoke done. I know you've all heard it before but wow! Over all I really did nothing to prepare, had work issues and just ran out of time for prep outside of dumping some salt on the shorties the night before.

Did two racks of babybacks (butcher not stocking good stuff yet) one with popular rib rub, other with Adobo/black pepper, that rack was amazing. Great flavor, sweet from the pole oak just over all amazing rib w/great pork flavor.

No mop. No foil. Unreal results. To be honest they were on about 30-45 minutes to long, beer might of been involved, 4.5 hrs start to pull.

Also did beef shorties. Salted the night before added black pepper this AM.

These were at 197ish after 5.5hrs. I had to pull since it was getting later and my guests had enough to drink so food was needed. Anyway next time I will get these to 205 and use more salt. Smoke flavor was really muted on the beef. I've read mesquite shines on the KBQ, will look into that.

Over all amazing product even with my mistakes. For a first run the ribs are already among the best I've ever had. More aggressive wood should be outstanding here.

**hogdog6** · March 4, 2017, 10:45 PM

Man you guys are killing me. That looks fantastic!!! All you KBQ guys keep the photos coming. Sooner than later my MCS will get me to pull the trigger and ask the wife for forgiveness after it arrives. (So far it's worked with gun purchases

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**JoeDSM** · March 5, 2017, 07:33 AM

My first cook went ok, the wood I used perhaps wasn't as seasoned as I thought it was and was producing a lot of creosote. I was planning on cooking hot and fast since I was cooking chicken so I figured I would give the "dirty smoke" option a go. Big mistake! Since my wood was producing dirtier smoke I had to readjust my game plan pretty quick and adjust the firebox for clean smoke. I think that saved the cook.

Some lessons learned:

Smoke farther away from the house, I just bought a 100' extension cord for my next cook
Make damn sure you have decent wood
Make sure to rotate food as needed, at one point because of how my chicken was oriented I had a 10 degree differential from breast to breast, I may half to cut my chickens in half to make this easier to manage

Question - How are you all using the control box probe port? I would imagine the majority of probes bottom out and make contact with the bottom of the stainless fan box. Ideally I would assume your probe tip is making contact with air not metal to get a more accurate reading.

This chicken, was salted and left to dry in the fridge for a 3-4 hours... it would have been longer but I didn't plan well. I applied Memphis dust and smoked them till they were done, maybe 1-2 hours I wasn't keeping track very well.

**Dale Case** · March 5, 2017, 09:15 AM

JoeDSM That chicken looks perfect, you nailed it. I have a Maverick 732 monitor. It has 2 probes and 2 u clamps to mount probe(s) on grill grates. I use one of the u clamps as a stopper on the probe so it is hanging in open air in the fan box. Good call on the smoke option if it looked like you were burning down a house Lol. My wood is very dry and barely puts off any visible smoke, basically just a tiny amount when I add a log. The S&G rub is arguably the best rub you will ever put on chicken, you should really mix some and try it

**Histrix** · March 5, 2017, 12:04 PM

JoeDSM The "brains" of a probe tip are a millimeter away from the very end of the probe. They aren't going to be impacted by the very tip of the probe contacting the cook box to any significant degree (no pun intended).

I've run my KBQ with a grate probe inside the cookbox and with a probe in the exhaust gas hole. Here's a little pix showing the temp rise and fall during the fan/thermostat cycle:

The darker line is the exhaust probe. The lighter line is the grate temp inside the cookbox.

You can clearly see that when the fan is running the exhaust temp matches the temp inside and when the fan is off the exhaust temp drops off a few degrees and does not stay the same temp as what is happening inside the cookbox.

That indicates to me that the exhaust probe tip being in contact with the cookbox surface is nothing to be concerned about.

**OmegaDog12** · March 6, 2017, 02:20 PM

Histrix@[email protected] wanted to thank all of you for your advice. Cooked 16 Butts over Hickory/Oak, sold 175 plates, then gave out of slaw and baked beans. Sold the rest of the 'Cue as sandwiches. Caught a great sale on Butts for $1/lb. Local hospital donated beans, coleslaw and plates. All customers raved about the pulled pork. Able to raise $2600 for the March of Dimes! The kids from the March of Dimes (and me) thank you all!!

The OmegaDog

**OmegaDog12** · March 6, 2017, 04:19 PM

@tbob4: I have 2 LBGE's with DigiQ's (that's 6 butts), a PBC (2 butts) and 8 in the KBQ. IT WAS WORK, but for a great cause! Again, thanks for the help

**OmegaDog12** · March 7, 2017, 04:58 PM

JoeDSM I don't think that any were truly superior in all aspects, but they were very different in taste. I watched the video with Noah at PBC and smoked the butts on the PBC with hickory to 160 degrees, wrapped them in aluminum foil with added beer (Coors) and finished to 198 internal temp. These probably had the lightest smoke flavor. The strongest smoke flavor was the KBQ -cooked to 170 with hickory/oak, both "dirty" and "clean" ports open, foiled with beer added and in the oven to internal temp of 200. Intermediate was the LBGE(hickory wood only)with the DigiQ. Again foiled at 180 with Coors added, then put in oven to internal temp of 200. If I was retired and had nothing to do (10 hours cooking/adding wood, staying up all night after working a 10 hr. day-a beer or three may have affected this ;-) -was tough) or I was going to enter contests, I would always use the KBQ. The other two are "set it and forget it," but not as flavorful. Easiest (set-up, the cook and clean-up) to use was definitely the PBC. For serving, I mixed all of them together so I doubt the crowd knew the difference, but they all said it was some of the best BBQ they had ever eaten and I'm already getting questions about when is the "cookout for the staff!" Hope this helps!

**burke54** · March 9, 2017, 01:17 PM

Got my KBQ about 3 weeks ago, unfortunatley a family emergency occured between the time I ordered it and it arrived . This kept me from unboxing it for several days and posting till now. My experinence with quick delivery, great packing, and a quality product is the same high standards everyone else has reported. The first cook was President's day, 5 racks of ribs, 3 baby back 2 St. Louis. They were some of the best ribs I have ever done.

**EdF** · March 10, 2017, 07:23 PM

burke54 I've had that problem many times with direct uploads from my Android phone. There are at least a couple of remedies. If you can put them on a PC/Mac/whatever, and edit them, making sure that the format when saving is jpeg, you'll be fine. The android format seems to be some other one, so it's mostly a matter of forcing the output format.

**backmarker** · March 12, 2017, 06:04 AM

This thread has been an absolute joy. The quality of the food and photos is superb. And that, I have to say, was a great relief: I only looked in here after I had ordered my own KBQ.

So here is my own first experience with the karubecue. I enjoyed the same excellent service from Bill Karau that everyone else has reported. Bill went out of his way to help with all aspects of shipping to the other side of the world and then making sure I was sorted with a suitable step down transformer and US style extension cord.

First item, as for all new users was log size. I thought I was ready for this, but my Plan A came a cropper when I noticed my old chainsaw was spraying bar oil on the wood like it was applying fake tanning lotion. Looked up the price here of Alligator loppers, swallowed, and sharpened the handsaw. Looked up the relative hardness of Australian Ironbark hoping the name was just parochial big noting, but no ... 14 on a scale that has American Oak at 6. Swallowed again (beer this time) and got stuck in. Much easier to chop to size then saw the smaller splits.

Shed filled, fired it up. Found it easy to get a good bed of coals, and the unit came up to temp (225 F) in less than 15 minutes from striking the match. Ironbark is pretty dense (around 1100kg/m3) and burns to a good bed of embers.

Tried a rack of pork ribs as I have been cooking a lot of these this summer and reckoned they would make the easiest comparison with the new cooker. And, well, who needs an excuse for ribs? Dry brined, then Memphis Dusted. No foil, no spritzing, cooked at 225F for 4.5 hours. Straight down the line AR Meathead orthodoxy.

Top poppet for the first half while also smoking some tomatoes, heads of garlic and a surplus of cayenne peppers from the garden. These were for eggplant parmigiana the next day, and also to act as canaries in the coal mine while looked at evenness of heat. As expected, the bottom shelf was just a bit hotter, but very even otherwise. Opened just the lower poppet for the last half the cook. Had to adjust the temp dial down on this poppet - raised the cook box temperature by about 30 F. Perhaps a result of the strong bed of embers? With 20 minutes to go, applied the Danny Gauldren glaze made with southern comfort and a healthy splodge of Memphis Dust.

Could have dried the glaze off a little more, but the smell was driving me to distraction. So out they came. The texture of the meat was perfect and the taste...well, I have to say these were the best ribs I had ever eaten, let alone cooked myself. I felt like laughing and weeping at the same time. A sad case of successful rib hysteria. The Boss is not a big fan of most sauces, but she demanded a side serve of the glaze to dip in. And if she's happy, then so are we all.

Also spitchcocked and dry brined a small chook, rubbed it with an ancho/pasilla/allspice rub mixed with Memphis dust, and put it in for the last 30 minutes of the ribs. Once the ribs were out, upped the heat to 260F for another 45 minutes, glazing at the end with an apple-jalapeno concoction. Great smoky taste, wonderfully tender breast meat and surprisingly crispy skin, even with the glaze. Terrific.

The surprise packet was the tomato. Simply halved and whacked in at 225F for nearly two hours. Most were later cooked down into a marinara sauce, but I served up a dozen or so of them as is at room temp. Semi dried, a bit chewy, super sweet, nicely smoky and almost meaty in taste. They were vacuumed off the plate in no time. It's the end of autumn here, so time to buy up on cheap end of season tomatoes and smoke and then dry or jar them. Honestly, they were like candy.

Like everyone who has posted before, I was very happy with the clean smoke flavours from the KBQ. It is hard to describe - it isn't overpowering, but nor is it a background thing. It just seems an integral and natural part of the food. I could not be happier with the KBQ.

**hogdog6** · March 12, 2017, 11:03 PM

I cannot get over how great the food always looks you all cook on your KBQ's, keep the pics and info coming. I'm starting to locate a good wood source in my area, if found I'm one step closer to pulling the trigger. "I love this thread!"

**backmarker** · March 15, 2017, 07:28 AM

I have enjoyed the various posts with chuck roasts, but it is not a cut I often see here. Chuck is always sold as "steaks" for stewing. I intended to arrange with the butcher for a thicker cut in the 5 lb range, but never quite got around to it. So I just gave it a whirl with the thickest piece in the butchers case. Dry brined, then some Big Bad Beef rub.

I ran the KBQ at 212F. After 2 hours with the lower poppet open, burning ironbark, it was looking good. A very striking colour under the rub.

Unfortunately at this point Dad's Taxi service was called into service to run my daughter about, and an Adele concert down the road was causing traffic chaos. I figured it safest to wrap the chuck in foil while I was away. The beef ended having another 1 1/2 hours in the oven in the foil, and then 45 minutes in the esky while I ran the oven hotter for some chicken wings and a whole cauliflower. The chuck ended up lovely and tender, but the bark was softened a bit too much for my liking.

Meathead's Red Wine sauce recipe was looking spot on, until a little last minute inattention turned it into something quite syrupy. I was about to thin it, but it tasted pretty good so I just went with it as is.

I will do this again. A nice cheap cut and a surprisingly good outcome. I'll perhaps give it a go at 275F next time to compare the result. It's a thin cut and I'm wary of drying it out, but if worst comes to worst I'll just chop it fine into chili or beans...

Best of all, the whole family raved about the beef, chicken and the cauliflower.

**hogdog6** · March 15, 2017, 11:50 PM

Spinaker said it all. The KBQ smoke ring is always incredible!!!

**Sacred Smoke BBQ** · March 16, 2017, 12:08 AM

I sure enjoy the color that we all get from the kbq. I intentionally did not add any rub to this side of the flat just to see what it would look like. Used all mesquite wood (currently my favorite) and the internal temp of the brisket at the time of pic was 151°. Also was cooking at an avg temp of around 250°

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