As I have mentioned before, I love grilling. I have several articles on grilling in this blog and my favorite grilling machine is the Big Green Egg.
Note: I get paid commissions for purchases made through any links to Amazon products in this post.
Note: I get paid commissions for purchases made through any links to Amazon products in this post.
Overnight Cooks
One of my favorite things about the Big Green Egg is the fact that you can cook "low n' slow" overnight and have a really great meal the next day or over several days. However, that process, at least for me, has a certain paranoia involved because the temperature can go down too low or get up too high and require some adjustments to made in the middle of the night.
Enter the DigiQ
So, after several years of interrupted sleep, I finally scraped together enough money (~$230 with tax) to buy a solution to my sleepless nights. The BBQ Guru sells the DigiQ by itself or as part of a one package solution. I went with the one package solution that includes the following:
"Digit Kit Green with 6’ Probes, Pit Viper Fan, and Ceramic Adaptor"
"Digit Kit Green with 6’ Probes, Pit Viper Fan, and Ceramic Adaptor"
The DigiQ DX2
The DigiQ DX2 is the brains of the outfit. It has a Power port, a Blower port, a Pit Probe port, and a Food Probe port.
The LED screen is where the unit shows the information that you need.
The Blower
While the Digi Q is the brains of the operation, the Pit Viper is the muscle. It has an adjustable plate that makes it easy to slide into the BGE's bottom vent and a small door that controls how much air you want to let in. You can slide the door up and down depending on the type of cooking you are doing. For low and slow, you open it about a third. For cooking faster, you can open it up all the way or somewhere in between.
Putting it all together
I learned the hard way that the Pit temp probe is a critical part of this setup. It tells the DigiQ the temperature of the grill, the DigiQ reads the temperature that you set, and tells the Pit Vipor to turn up or down the "fan" to get the temperature where you want it. Unfortunately, when I first used the setup, I didn't have the probe pushed all the way into the DigiQ, so the temperature was going higher than I wanted. I finally figured it out, but it took the grill a while to get back down to my desired temperature of 220 degrees (F).
Note: I get paid commissions for purchases made through any links to Amazon products in this post.
Note: I get paid commissions for purchases made through any links to Amazon products in this post.
Still need a way to see the temperature
While the DigiQ has alarms that you can set that tell you when you are outside of the correct temperature range, they are fairly useless if you are smoking a pork butt or something overnight. Instead, I use an iGrill 2 to monitor the food and grill (though you could also you something like a Maverick). For my first cook, I used the clip at the end of the DigiQ probe to attach to the BGE's thermometer. I then ran the iGrill's pit probe into that same location so that all three temperature gauges were in the same location. I then put an iGrill food probe into the port butt.
Final Results
I watched the iGrill's temperature on my Apple Watch periodically until bedtime. The grill was rock solid (give or take a degree or two) at my 220 degree temperature until I went to bed. I woke up and everything was still locked in. It was wonderful! I can now go out and buy a brisket and be confident that it will cook perfectly overnight.
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