Every year we make adjustments and manage to make minor improvements to the process. After last year I made some adjustments to the pipe burner to improve the efficiency of the flame. This is one of the burners for on of our smaller pots.
I added new holes between the existing holes (we copied one of the existing burners) and increased the size of some of the holes to make them graduated. What I got was a very nice blue flame with no yellow.
It made a huge difference in getting the stew to temperature. It also made a hot spot in the middle of the burner that scorched the stew in that area. This is due to the shape of the carolina cooker pot being more pointed on the bottom that a more traditional/antique pot with a flatter bottom. I'll be welding some of the center holes shut and drilling new holes toward the outer edges of the burner.
The new jet burners worked great. We'll be building more. The keggle was another success. The convex bottom causes the boil to churn the pot and pretty much just shreds the chicken.
The big change this year was to how we process the stock. Everyone on the team has a bad back or shoulder or something. So we didn't want to crouch over to strain the stock into the 2 gallon buckets we use to chill/store it so we dumped it into my 15 gallon brew pot (Center). This allowed the fat to rise to the top and we drained from the valve, resulting in a lower fat stock.
