How long can your old Imperial Kamado Claypot do low-n-slow?

I resurrected an old Imperial Kamado 'modern medium' (16" grill) I believe and I've run it a few times now but the first time had a few air leaks (mostly in the top damper) and I was unable to shut it down --- so it ...s...l..o..w..l..y.. ran until I sealed up the top damper by installing some Rutland gasket cement and some huge 5/8" or similar fiberglass rope (that's all I had).. Needless to say that pretty much solved the problem (along with installing a screw on the damper to hold the adjustment plate -- I threw away the old rusty screw)..

Anyway, before I did that this thing slowly simmered away for what was probably 12-18 hours and barely used any koals (it probably consumed about 6-10 Kingsford briquettes)..

So... How long can you run these things low-n-slow before the koals are gone and a reload is in order?

Also -- any particular brand of thermometer you like to use?

swamprb said:

Did you have any meat on the grill when when it was running with 6-10 K-briqs?
I don't think they would last that long with fats dripping on them.

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Nope.. No meat -- I actually had something closer to 20-30+ total but what I was trying to get at was that I didn't consume all of them by the time I put out the fire (after fixing the air leak in the top damper) -- it had only used between 6-10 over the 12-18 hours (rough estimate since I didn't count how many I put on vs. re-used for the next kook)..

swamprb said:

So 325*-500* is kind of the range given for almost all the recipes. I never mastered it low n' slow, only because I'm too impatient to work it like this, and its probably easier to cook on the Large, I used the Weber 18.5" grate with the flip up sides and could easily add charcoal or wood. Usually @ 6 briqs every few hours. Definitely not good for overnighters! And easy to see why people would tend to overload them.

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I'll have to admit that I had the charcoal piled up to the grill level not thinking that the grill sat that low.. Needless to say I don't do that anymore is its a great way to char your food! As for low-n-slow on one of these -- I think its doable assuming I've got a dome thermometer installed.. I would not let the drippings drop into the fire or you're surely going to impact how well the cook goes. I use a heat deflector on my big K7 Kamado and a drop pan and would plan to do the same on the little Imperial Kamado using perhaps a large heavy metal pie tin (not aluminum) with perhaps 1/2" to 3/4" sand in it to work as a buffer and drip pan sitting directly on the koals and then load up a pork butt on the grill just above that. I'm thinking I should be able to keep the temps down in the 200's without tons of trouble but I guess I shouldn't knock on wood just yet since I've not done it..

jiarby said:

There's a guy here in phoenix that ran his #7 Kamado for 7 days on a 40# load back in 2003. (http://www.kamado.com/discus/messages/1/3723.html)

With an IK I'll bet you could get 3 days for sure if you can keep the ash from clogging the firegrate holes. It's all about the airflow and how much fuel you can cram in there.

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Hey Jiarby.. Long time no hear (I only recently joined this forum but still monitor the Kamado forum -- mostly complaints about lack of service it seems at this point).. I had seen the above message thread sometime back and realize the bigger ones can run long (I've easily ran my K7 for well over 24 hours w/o refill) but the little Imperial Kamado can only hold perhaps 1/8th what the K7 can hold for lump.. My Imperial has the ceramic ash grate at the bottom and I'm not convinced that its the best way to go for ensuring the ash falls through -- I might have to get my brother to weld me up some heave guage steel into a nice mesh and try that out..

Well.. I was never planning to use (and abuse) my IK like I do with my Richard Johnson's Kamado as I realize they're distant relatives but have totally different usage patterns -- the RJK can take excessive heat (as recently proven when I got mine to the 1200-1300 degree range) -- the IK would probably crack into pieces before it got anywhere near those temps. I am hoping that I can get my IK to do low-n-slow as a (much smaller) alternative (read that as 'portable alternative') to my RJK which weighs in at a whopping 600lb (vs. my IK which is perhaps 50-75lb).. At some point I'll take the IK on a road trip and make some good 'Q' for my mother who's never tasted anything from any sort of clay (or RJK) kooker...

I think I may see about drilling a hole in the dome for a thermometer and set aside an afternoon or longer to try a sample run w/o food but with my home-made heat-deflector trick and see if I can keep solid 225's for several hours and get an idea of how long the koals will go before the temps drop..

Thanks for reminding me.. I've got a Stoker controller that I need to update.. I could use it in a pinch to monitor temps too -- even web-based (I've got an ethernet port in my backyard :wink. Anyway, I'll check into the other stuff too.. Thx!

Ok.. Just a quick followup.. I did a test w/o any food and ran the IK for about 6.5 hours before it started losing steam and dropped to about 170 by about 7 hours. For the vast majority of that 6.5 hour period it was running at about 240-250.. At that point I shut it down -- it still hadn't used all of the koal but did use about 60-75% of what I started with..

Below is the pic of what I started with -- not new koals by any means..


I installed a BGE thermometer yesterday and today I painted the top damper with some flat black stove paint.. Today it looks like this: