Time for Grillin'

Brr, it's cold out there!

Here is what my car thermometer the other morning in Northern Minnesota:

Yes, that says -10 degrees Fahrenheit.  I left this cold place for the balmy +1 °F that day. After I left, they dropped to around -30 °F.  Other than bolstering the bragging rights of Minnesotans, this cold reminded me about a fun trick my friend Mike sent me back around when I started the blog.  He is a much more seasoned and frequent social media type. He blogs for Massachusetts General Hospital,  you can check him out on twitter at @MDMorrison82

His trick was about checking the level of the a propane tank with warm water.  If you pour a glass of warm water down the side, the propane will conduct the heat away and you can find the level by feeling where the metal becomes cold.  Pretty cool!  Here is an example.

There are some other ways, such as little thermostats you can buy at the store or the traditional shake method, but the warm water is quick and easy. You could always take the straightforward route and buy a pressure gauge to put between the tank and your grill, but that may just be too logical. Here is a good summary of methods available online.

Can I Grill?

The pressing question is, can you still grill at -10 °F?  If you ignore the time to heat the metal, not freeze your hands to the utensils and to get food to a proper temperature, you may still be able to grill!   It might be a challenge to get that propane to ignite, but there should still be pressure in the tank.  People in most other parts of the country would never consider such things, but there is a point in Minnesota, where all grilling will likely cease.


Propane is a small hydrocarbon.  Essentially three carbon atoms and eight hydrogen atoms C3H8. Since it is so small and has little polarity, it has a very very low freezing and boiling point.  The measured boiling point of propane is -44 °F, that means at or below that temperature at atmospheric pressure, propane is happily a liquid.  Part of the reason propane is in tanks, is that it is pressurized to a liquid and vaporizes to a gas once pressure is released (hence it is a gas when it comes out of the burners).  Temperatures below -44 °F will result in the propane not having enough energy to become a gas and therefore no pressure at the burner.  Now, almost anywhere else, this would never be an issue, but as we know in the Great North Woods, -44 degrees is definitely possible.

Looks like International falls may be out of luck for two months of the year!

Embarrass, MN has it even worse!

How can I cook in the winter?

Various camping burners actually run the gas line through the heating zone to vaporize the gas before it gets to the burner.  This is because you are typically burning a fuel that needs much higher temperatures to build up pressure.  Back when I did a lot of camping, I bought this MSR Dragonfly stove, and it was a pretty nice setup. It is lightweight and since the pump is on the bottle, you can avoid spills. One that a troop I worked with had the Coleman 533. This has the burner attached to the bottle, but is a robust little stove. You can see the brass pipe running across the top to heat the fuel in the picture below.
 

Don't worry hunny, it's OK...

So if you "forgot" to put the grill away last fall, just tell your spouse that you were waiting for the proper time to test the physical properties of hydrocarbons by checking the boiling point of propane. The warm water trick probably will not work if the water freezes almost instantly at -10 °F though.

For a bit of extra information, the boiling point of butane, having only ONE MORE carbon atom and two more hydrogen atoms C4H10, jumps dramatically to about +30 °F, making lighting that cigarette even more troublesome in the winter.  Perhaps it would be a good New Year's resolution to quit anyway.