BBQ Guru

Spent some time this past weekend cooking some briskets on my Large Big Green Egg. And had a chance to try out a new toy, the BBQ Guru Nano Q. An electronic air draft controller that monitors the internal temp of your BBQ pit and and puts just the right amount of air on your fire so the pit stays at the set temp.

I'm a big fan of products that do one thing really well. Its a rare product - the iPhone comes to mind - that does many things well. I've had cell phones that had tons of features and functions but didn't do their main job very well - i.e. making phone calls. More is not necessarily better and obviously the BBQ Guru product designers followed the K.I.S.S. principle with this edition of draft controllers.

I filled my BGE up with Wicked Good Lump Charcoal. Plugged in the Nano-Q, lit the fire and let it go. The Nano-Q defaults to 225* but the user can bump it up or down by 5 degrees with the two buttons on the front of the device. The optional operating method is to get the pit just how you like it using the pit thermometer, and then press both buttons which captures the pit temp and the Guru will keep it there nice and steady as long as your fuel holds up.

I cooked a couple of briskets which took about 12 hours. I decided to just let the pit go and see how long the Guru could keep the Egg going on one load of charcoal. The Egg was fired up at 3pm on Saturday. I finally unplugged the Guru at 9pm on Sunday - about 30 hours later. In addition to rock solid 225* the entire way, the Guru also seemed to do a great job at conserving fuel. There is still some lump charcoal left in the Egg.