Grue666

First attempt at beer can chicken yesterday. Amazing flavour and very moist but disappointed that the skin wasn’t crisp and ABSOLUTELY no beer flavour. Waste of good beer IMHO but I like the upright cooking position and will probably try again with a ceramic stand instead of a beer can.

Yes. Email and text on the day or the night before with a 2 hour time slot and a phone call 30min or so before they arrive. Van is also GPS trackable from the link in the time slot email.

Patience was rewarded. 1 minute after posting the message I got an email saying it has been dispatched. Literally arrived at 16.21

The one I bought for a friend at seconds past 08.00 is still “being processed”. She’s getting worried

I took everything out of it - firebox etc, and then 2 off us were (just about) able to carry it

We’ll done. Now for the lottery of whether they arrive safely or not. My Kamado was fine but my Aldi Hanging egg chair was mislaid by the courier!

I got 1 for a friend at 08.00 and currently have one in my basket waiting for another friend to decide if she wants it. Did you get one?

I bought the Inkbird IBBQ-4T and was very happy with it although even on wi-if there were occasional short dropouts on the graphs. Currently 10% off on Amazon with a free BG-HH1C instant read but I bought a few weeks ago with 20% off so may be worth checking back frequently to see if voucher amount improves. Although with main BBQ season approaching discounts may stop for all i know.

Yes I think that’s the way to go. Part of my learning curve. I’d read about doing it that way but stuck with (modified) old habits - nothing like learning by mistakes

Hi, I’m no expert and as I said this was done as a learning exercise as much as anything else as it is such a different beast to the MT I’ve previously used. I bought a cheap rolled boneless shoulder - 2.5kg as currently on offer in Tesco @ 3.50/kg (rather than risk an expensive Butt if it all went pear shaped). I trimmed and salted it the night before with about 2 teaspoons course sea salt and left it in fridge. Early rise and nearly filled the fire bowl but wouldn’t do that next time as so little charcoal was used, I lit a handful of charcoal using my Weber chimney starter and put that in the middle of the firebow then sprinkled some Apple chips around the coals - not sure how much 100g or so and closed the lid. I rubbed the meat with Meatheads Memphis dust - 2or 3 tablespoons and rechecked the Kamado. This is when things went wrong as the temperature rose faster than expected so I closed all vents and crossed my fingers. As it happened the dome thermometer was reading high as already mentioned so things weren’t as bad as feared when I get the meat on and temp was soon OK. I then did very little other than play adjusting the vents periodically to try keeping the temp around 107ºC. I didn’t open the lid during the cook/add more chips. What would I do differently? Use less charcoal (not that it was wasted as closing the vents at the end left loads unburnt for next time), work out how to add wood chips mid cook as smoke flavour was lacking because not all had been used up/ not enough used - I’m still coming to terms with just how efficient this thing is. Give myself more time - I’d now be confident to start it the night before and leave it with little or no intervention. Am I on the right track?

Interesting. I used the AK for first time yesterday and chose a Pork Shoulder as it is quite a forgiving piece of meat that would provide a good meal and offer plenty of time to learn about the Kamado. I certainly learn a lot about setting the vents for temp control and just how little charcoal is used over 12 hours. Set up for indirect cook with 2 Inkbird probes. The dome probe was set up a little way from the meat but still in the indirect area. Like you there was a distinct temperature difference of a little over 50ºC for most of the cook but after about 9 hours the 2 matched almost exactly - certainly within 2ºC. I can’t really explain why that happened and didn’t do any comparison during the curing burn on Saturday.

If you weren't already planning it, I would suggest you get the delivery guys to open the package and give it a quick check. When they Brough mine I overheard one saying "We better not drop this one" and then he promptly let the wind blown lorry door slam into the corner of the packing. No harm done though and they were very helpful. Mine had a few minor imperfections in the enamel but nothing else (same as my Son when his arrived last week).

I've taken a couple of photos of the firebowl if that helps. My thoughts exactly My Inkbird IBBQ-4T arrived today so the slide has started...

I’m interested to hear how it all works out and whether you feel the advantages are worth the cost. I would need to convince SWMBO that an accessory is worth 1/3 the cost of the oven! I do plan to buy a Smokeware chimney cap however but they are currently OOS