Safe or Sorry........................

[7un47im3s]

So for many who won't be able to relate allow to go off topic and explain my dilemma. Here in the not so great state of California we've got this agency called ISO who is responsible for maintaining the power grid, electrical distribution, etc. as I understand it. At any rate even with all the residential solar, commercial solar, and limited new power generating capacity brought online since the Gray Davis years (and thats a whole nother discussion) ISO's solution to every heat wave is to warn people to cut back power consumption, issue "flex alerts" and finally limit available power through the use of rolling blackouts. Mind you with no warning, they just shut it off and play dumb. Shut our area off yesterday afternoon for several hours when it was 113*, and with local temps today and tomorrow forecast 110*+ I expect more of the same. Has anyone run their SF off of a generator yet? I imagine its possible if you're set up for it in advance and not scrambling to throw it into service as your "what if" back up. I don't own a generator anymore, my back up is a WSM, a Genesis, or a Kettle, probably in that order.

I've got a rack of beef short ribs goin on the SF today, and a butt goin down tomorrow. I'm gonna roll the dice and go with the SF and pray those bastiges at ISO don't have our neighborhood in the crosshairs again this weekend. You all stay safe, stay cool and enjoy the rest of your Labor Day weekend.

 

[bbqking]

Move to Arizona, same heat, not as many libtards.

 

[JpsBBQ]

Should be fine. Check the inter web for amp draw. I would think a small 2000kw generator would easily handle it. The load is all at start up. Once running you are basically running a miniature fan and a slow small auger.

 

[7un47im3s]

Well it's noon, 113* in the shade and it's on...................2 hours of SB followed by ? hours at 200* or less if ISO does a fly by and I'm left w/ ambient.............. Fingers crossed

 

[Bruno]

113 F all that, I couldn’t do it.
Hope the power stays on I just started a cook myself, and couldn’t imagine today without the fans.

 

[abmet]

Hell no too hot. Though if power goes out you still be in low and slow range.

 

[Bruno]

Hell no too hot. Though if power goes out you still be in low and slow range.

Fucking A right!! I’m a coast guy and used to 75 degrees, this 100 stuff is brutal with no AC.

 

[7un47im3s]

Well good ol ISO let us be yesterday and despite an incredibly long stall at 188* for 2 hours I stuck with it and finally took off the short ribs at 195* a little short of my intended 203* Ambient air at 6:30 was still 104*. Wrapped and rested for 45 minutes short ribs were pretty darn good. Used Weber hickory pellets, 2 hours of smoke boost, followed by 3 1/2 hrs at 225* and 30 min. at 250* I don't know if holding out for another 8* would have made a noticeable difference in the end product, but I do know that all your all photos look at lot better on your fine china than mine do on our paperware.. I'm on a roll, followed Bruno's advice and put a butt on last night at 10:00 planning on 1 1/2 - 2 hrs per #, Woke up to the smell of hickory in the cool morning air and a pleasant 61* Pellets left unattended for 8 + hours nearly resulted in a flame out as despite having plenty of pellets in the hopper the auger cavity was exposed with maybe half a cup of pellets left to feed it. and no I haven't put the liner replacement in yet. Lesson learned, 8 hours +/- is the max time to not have to push pellets in the hopper. Butt looks good this morning, a few spritzes with ACV, internal temps at 181* and ambient's only supposed to tickle 100* today. What could go wrong???

 

[Captainmike]

Well good ol ISO let us be yesterday and despite an incredibly long stall at 188* for 2 hours I stuck with it and finally took off the short ribs at 195* a little short of my intended 203* Ambient air at 6:30 was still 104*. Wrapped and rested for 45 minutes short ribs were pretty darn good. Used Weber hickory pellets, 2 hours of smoke boost, followed by 3 1/2 hrs at 225* and 30 min. at 250* I don't know if holding out for another 8* would have made a noticeable difference in the end product, but I do know that all your all photos look at lot better on your fine china than mine do on our paperware.. I'm on a roll, followed Bruno's advice and put a butt on last night at 10:00 planning on 1 1/2 - 2 hrs per #, Woke up to the smell of hickory in the cool morning air and a pleasant 61* Pellets left unattended for 8 + hours nearly resulted in a flame out as despite having plenty of pellets in the hopper the auger cavity was exposed with maybe half a cup of pellets left to feed it. and no I haven't put the liner replacement in yet. Lesson learned, 8 hours +/- is the max time to not have to push pellets in the hopper. Butt looks good this morning, a few spritzes with ACV, internal temps at 181* and ambient's only supposed to tickle 100* today. What could go wrong???




View attachment 1753
View attachment 1754

This was when I did my brisket Friday-Saturday. Brisket went on at 11:45pm Friday and I took this photo of the hopper at 12:45pm Saturday so 12+ hours and I still did not manipulate the pellets I let it go until 2:30 when I pulled the brisket off. I removed my hopper slide insert two months ago and you can see the finger guard is not installed, and I do not have the floor of the hopper lined. I was impressed with this. I have learned that on these long cooks under 300* the pellet feed rate is really slow so the auger chute can be exposed quite a bit and still be Ok on pellet flow to the firepot. As long as you’re not seeing the auger itself exposed you should be fine (actually even if it was a little exposed it should be OK because the PiD logic would increase feed rate). If your grill is perfectly level left to right, believe it or not those pellets will keep flowing, at least the Weber pellets I can’t speak to other brands. These were mesquite pellets in the photo.

I fill my hopper to the absolute max it can handle for an overnight cook. I think on the EX6 it’s actually a bit more than 22 lbs.

 

[Captainmike]

Well good ol ISO let us be yesterday and despite an incredibly long stall at 188* for 2 hours I stuck with it and finally took off the short ribs at 195* a little short of my intended 203* Ambient air at 6:30 was still 104*. Wrapped and rested for 45 minutes short ribs were pretty darn good. Used Weber hickory pellets, 2 hours of smoke boost, followed by 3 1/2 hrs at 225* and 30 min. at 250* I don't know if holding out for another 8* would have made a noticeable difference in the end product, but I do know that all your all photos look at lot better on your fine china than mine do on our paperware.. I'm on a roll, followed Bruno's advice and put a butt on last night at 10:00 planning on 1 1/2 - 2 hrs per #, Woke up to the smell of hickory in the cool morning air and a pleasant 61* Pellets left unattended for 8 + hours nearly resulted in a flame out as despite having plenty of pellets in the hopper the auger cavity was exposed with maybe half a cup of pellets left to feed it. and no I haven't put the liner replacement in yet. Lesson learned, 8 hours +/- is the max time to not have to push pellets in the hopper. Butt looks good this morning, a few spritzes with ACV, internal temps at 181* and ambient's only supposed to tickle 100* today. What could go wrong???




View attachment 1753
View attachment 1754

Oh and those look great by the way!!!

 

[Dassman5]

This was when I did my brisket Friday-Saturday. Brisket went on at 11:45pm Friday and I took this photo of the hopper at 12:45pm Saturday so 12+ hours and I still did not manipulate the pellets I let it go until 2:30 when I pulled the brisket off. I removed my hopper slide insert two months ago and you can see the finger guard is not installed, and I do not have the floor of the hopper lined. I was impressed with this. I have learned that on these long cooks under 300* the pellet feed rate is really slow so the auger chute can be exposed quite a bit and still be Ok on pellet flow to the firepot. As long as you’re not seeing the auger itself exposed you should be fine (actually even if it was a little exposed it should be OK because the PiD logic would increase feed rate). If your grill is perfectly level left to right, believe it or not those pellets will keep flowing, at least the Weber pellets I can’t speak to other brands. These were mesquite pellets in the photo.

I fill my hopper to the absolute max it can handle for an overnight cook. I think on the EX6 it’s actually a bit more than 22 lbs.

Out of curiosity did you get the low pellet level alarm as I did at 3 am when I forgot to fill the hopper before retiring?

 

[Captainmike]

Out of curiosity did you get the low pellet level alarm as I did at 3 am when I forgot to fill the hopper before retiring?

Good question. No I didn’t because if you look closely at the photos where the sensor is you’ll see some pellets hung up on the sensor so the sensor was still registering as “satisfied” in the control logic. Seems those little screw heads can hold a pellet or two. Would probably be wise to use all flush mounting screws in the hopper but then again the material is too thin a gage.

 

[dudemcnally]

So for many who won't be able to relate allow to go off topic and explain my dilemma. Here in the not so great state of California we've got this agency called ISO who is responsible for maintaining the power grid, electrical distribution, etc. as I understand it. At any rate even with all the residential solar, commercial solar, and limited new power generating capacity brought online since the Gray Davis years (and thats a whole nother discussion) ISO's solution to every heat wave is to warn people to cut back power consumption, issue "flex alerts" and finally limit available power through the use of rolling blackouts. Mind you with no warning, they just shut it off and play dumb. Shut our area off yesterday afternoon for several hours when it was 113*, and with local temps today and tomorrow forecast 110*+ I expect more of the same. Has anyone run their SF off of a generator yet? I imagine its possible if you're set up for it in advance and not scrambling to throw it into service as your "what if" back up. I don't own a generator anymore, my back up is a WSM, a Genesis, or a Kettle, probably in that order.

I've got a rack of beef short ribs goin on the SF today, and a butt goin down tomorrow. I'm gonna roll the dice and go with the SF and pray those bastiges at ISO don't have our neighborhood in the crosshairs again this weekend. You all stay safe, stay cool and enjoy the rest of your Labor Day weekend.

I lost power briefly during a cook once that caused my WSF to go into 'improper shutdown mode', bummer...Since that cook I have run my WSF on a UPS. I've used an APC 650, and that seems to have more than enough power to run the glowplug and fans. I've run it on battery power for as long as 15 min, I expect that UPS would run my SF for 30+ min, I've since replaced the UPS with one with a larger battery. That UPS estimates 370 min of runtime off power...That should be enough to get me through any blackout I'm likely to have

 

[Brad S]

I ran mine off an inverter generator last month due to a power failure in the middle of a brisket. It worked fine.

 

[abmet]

Good question. No I didn’t because if you look closely at the photos where the sensor is you’ll see some pellets hung up on the sensor so the sensor was still registering as “satisfied” in the control logic. Seems those little screw heads can hold a pellet or two. Would probably be wise to use all flush mounting screws in the hopper but then again the material is too thin a gage.

Wish they had used pan head or something flatter, but being able to use socket can be good with less worry of stripping one.