The Big Green Egg was an oddball followed by obsessives known as “Egg Heads” when chef JJ Boston in the early 2000s started teaching people in Indianapolis how to use the kamado-style ceramic charcoal grill. In Broad Ripple, only a few more months of grilling classes and barbecue dinners are left at Boston's Chef JJ's Back Yard.

Back Yard is not a restaurant. Boston teaches cooking classes and hosts reservation-only dinners there. They have become so popular since Back Yard opened in 2009 that Boston launched a huge, second location Downtown in 2015 and recently wrote a kamado grill cookbook.

The 1040 Broad Ripple Ave. Chef JJ's Back Yard closes this fall. “Unfortunately, we do not own the property and our lease is up,” the company reported in its monthly newsletter.

Private event bookings will continue through October in Broad Ripple as Boston explores other opportunities with the Back Yard brand, according to the newsletter.

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Meantime, it’s business as usual at Chef JJ’s Downtown, 42 W. South St., one block east of Lucas Oil Stadium.

Like Chef JJ's Backyard, the 8,000-square-foot Downtown location, offers grilling classes, corporate gatherings, pop-up restaurants and special events such as wine and craft beer dinners. The business also sells kamado-style grills.

In spring 2018, Boston released his cookbook “Go Kamado,” a collection of Boston’s favorite recipes for game, beef, pork, chicken, seafood, sides, breads and dessert, all cooked on kamado-style grills. Boston also offers grilling tips and information.

A Spokane, Wash., native, Boston grew up in a restaurant-owning family. He came to Indianapolis in 2000 to help open RAM Restaurant & Brewery, where he worked as chef until 2005. Boston began teaching classes one day a week at the former Grillmaster's Garden in Zionsville. The shop sold grills. That's where Boston fell for the Big Green Egg.

The ceramic cooker functions as a grill, smoker and oven. Kamado Joe is another brand of ceramic cooker Boston uses.

"It became a lot of fun to reinterpret recipes for the Egg," Boston told IndyStar in 2009. Boston's weekly class schedule quickly expanded as the chef became known for preparing entire meals, appetizers to dessert, on Big Green Eggs.

Follow IndyStar food writer Liz Biro on Twitter: @lizbiro, Instagram: @lizbiro, and on Facebook. Call her at 317-444-6264.