Africa Wild

Struggled again with maintaining heat last night
Either: The brickets I am using are poor quality. Or the grill isn't close enough to the fire.

And that gel stuff was useless. It flared up, but then went out before the brickets had caught alight.

Got it going eventually

thanks for the pic, Dzombs!


Maybe drill a couple of air holes at the bottom through the bricks at the back?

Dzombo , you need to lift the coals from floor of the braai to allow air supply from below .
Take a few bricks , place a grate over it on which to make the fire . The heat will then rise well from the coals through the food above it .
Then , place a screen at the top of your braai opening in front , to help contain the heat . The braai become somewhat like a large open oven , and contains heat inside the body before it goes up the chimney .
The chimney opening also seems quite excessively large , and you need to reduce the size somewhat . This is easily done with a piece of sheetmetal placed on top of the braai , with a hole cut into for smoke to come through .
In the meantime , while experimenting with this , use a large lid over the meat/foodstuffs while braaiing -- it helps to keep the heat on the food

Richprins wrote: ↑Wed Jul 04, 2018 9:01 am
Maybe drill a couple of air holes at the bottom through the bricks at the back?

Would this work?
If I was to drill some holes very few cm at the base at back of the braai??

You need lots of air , and small little holes will clog up .
You have a very nice braai , and need to do a proper job on it that works well

Maybe get a 1cm or so drill bit and try one row of bricks up? Nothing to lose?

My old charcoal braai was a rectangular box with a grid.
Not sure why this is getting so complicated

Anyhow, I am going to try changes bit by bit and see if it improves.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Stainless-St ... SwXYtY2omE
For a start have ordered a few of these to lift the coals up, so will see how that goes.

Was also talking to a friend of mine. He said I could be using rubbish charcoal. It's the standard cheapo from the supermarket.
I do have a bag of restaurant grade charcoal, so will give that a go too

Dzombo wrote: ↑Wed Jul 04, 2018 12:38 pm My old charcoal braai was a rectangular box with a grid.
Not sure why this is getting so complicated

Ja Dzombo, the more advanced we get, the less we seem to progress!

Flutterby wrote: ↑Wed Jul 04, 2018 1:01 pm

Dzombo wrote: ↑Wed Jul 04, 2018 12:38 pm My old charcoal braai was a rectangular box with a grid.
Not sure why this is getting so complicated

Ja Dzombo, the more advanced we get, the less we seem to progress!

Just getting a bit frustrated.
Have spent on a fortune on it. And it's not performing as I expected

It will work out eventually, Dzombs!