Silver vs Gold SJ Mini test ( Silver cook) 6 pound bird


 
Jeff Padell

Jeff Padell

TVWBB Pro
Ok, today I used the SJ Silver to cook a 6 pound chicken. I loaded my charcoal ring and I hoped to get the temps up to 325-350. I had the vents fully open. I lit 14 coals and spread them on top of the pile of unlit. The temp climbed to 290 and held there about 2 hours, it wasn’t going any higher so I lit another 6 coals and put them on the pile, when I took the mid section out about ¾ of the coals were going most fully ashed, I did get the temp to 320 for about 40 minutes and then it started going down again. The last 40 minutes it has steadily dropped to 255, but after 2 ½ hours the chicken said it was done.
I took it off and put the top back on, the temp has rebounded to 275 where it is holding right now. I am going to monitor it and see what the trends are.
The Gold cook yesterday had basically the same temps, 290 and held there, don't really see a difference between the two EXCEPT that when the cook was done I had about half the coals left with the gold, the silver ignite more of the coals
The chicken looks good and there was plenty of room in the mini.




 
Nice color on the bird.

Good test you did there. Try lump charcoal next time see how that goes...
 
I will try some lump, the skin looks great but it was a bit tough, the meat however was great. I used some Montreal rub and also some brown sugar on it.

One thing about the mini, whether Silver or Gold is that it doesn't use that much charcoal so I will try lump coal to see if it is hotter and not worry about using too much
 
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Your bird came out really nice!

When I need to achieve higher temps in the mini I'll dump a full Weber chimney load of coals lit to about half way up (certainly a lot more than 14 lit coals) into my SJS. I don't use a coal ring so it can handle the extra load. I can hold temps anywhere between 300-400F+ with this method easily.
 
yea, i have been debating about the use of a ring. i will not use a ring the next cook and see how that goes. for sure a ring limits the amount of coals used and might not be a good choice on long cooks.
 
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