Skip to main content

I decided to a test on my smoker by sticking my taylor thermometer in a peice of aluminum foil and turn my smoker on just like i would be cooking i put two ounce of wood in the box and cut the smoker on to 225 at 24 minutes i hit 225 deg. At 30 minutes it hit 268 deg. And 33 minutes i was up to 290 deg. At 25 minutes i hit 300 deg. I just checked it and at 40 minutes it is 308 deg in the smoker it says. I have a model 50 smoker. Is this normal my smoker only goes to 250 deg? Someone want to explain this or tell me what is the problem maybe. Kinda confused.
Original Post

Replies sorted oldest to newest

wow im totally confused now this temperature is jumping all over the place. At 2 hr it is 274 deg. At 2hr 30 min it is 220 deg at 2hr and 50 min it has jumped back up to 270 deg and at 3 hr it is still at 275 deg. I think something is really wrong with this smoker. It has only been at 225 deg a total of 4 times and it stayed there for around a minute or less. So much for keeping a steady temp is that not possible with this style smoker?
LOL! I think your smoker is working fine. It seems to average out okay.Now what you need to remember is that opening the door during a cook will make it spike then drop like what you just saw, besides letting all the heat out. That's why we tell newbies that the best approach to start out cooking with, is about opening the door as little as possible.
well from what i can tell after about 3 1/2 hours of checking it is that it never settled in to stay 225 which i thought it was suppose to it would go up and down the hole time. That seems odd to me i would have thought it would have maintained a lot closer to 225 plus i never opened the door.
quote:
Originally posted by pseshooter300:
I decided to a test on my smoker by sticking my taylor thermometer in a peice of aluminum foil and turn my smoker on just like i would be cooking i put two ounce of wood in the box and cut the smoker on to 225 at 24 minutes i hit 225 deg. At 30 minutes it hit 268 deg. And 33 minutes i was up to 290 deg. At 25 minutes i hit 300 deg. I just checked it and at 40 minutes it is 308 deg in the smoker it says. I have a model 50 smoker. Is this normal my smoker only goes to 250 deg? Someone want to explain this or tell me what is the problem maybe. Kinda confused.


part of the problem may be in the manner of testing with a probe "stuck in foil". Depending on how this is done the foil could definitely affect the results, as it is a conductor of heat. Might get better results simpling hanging the probe from a rack. The temp will swing a bit but the more important thing is the average temp. If you want to check the average temp you need something like a Maverick oven thermometer that will provide constant average temperature.
They also stay more 'regular' when there is a load of meat in there to work as a heat sink.

If you set your house thermostat at 74 deg in the winter but you take your temp readings IN the furnace you will certainly have a hard time finding hardly a moment when the reading is 74.

The CS coils go on and off as demand dictates, just like a house furnace.
I see these kinds of swings on my 55. I prefer to preheat for a bit to get though the initial spike and white smoke. Then wipe the grates and load. Swings are much smaller with a larger load. Food always turns out great so the swings dont seem to matter.

Only gripe I would have is its hard to lock in a lower holding temp because the swings are so large at the lower temperatures. Guessing its because the element is pretty high wattage.

Once you figure out the amount and type of wood you like, you are going to love cooking on it. Always take good notes.
When the smoker starts, it's trying to "get" to the temp you set. It WILL overshoot the temp (just has to do with how it works).

I would cook a load in it and if the temp is too high at the start, open the door and dump some heat.

Then over a period of time (say an 8 to 12 hour cook) what does the temp average?

Add Reply

Post
×
×
×
×
Link copied to your clipboard.
×