Use of multiple temp probes

From a newbee on the forum may I suggest testing both probes in a glass off ice water and recording the difference if any. Should read 32 degreese. I use freezer or masking tape on my probe ends with personal notes such as pull temps and times, helps after a few refreshments.

First,temp on a shoulder/butt COULD give you an indication that it might be time to open the door and start to check to see if it probes tender,the bone is loose,or it feels soft when you squeeze it.You might also check different spots on a butt for tender and temp with your instaread.
You can then put in your good notes when they happened and start to build your experience level.

Ten years ago and today many good cooks knew nothing about internal temp.

Their experience with timing led them to doing what we do when we open the door.
Experienced cooks may insert a couple probes at the start and not connect to the therm unit until the next morning,in case of rain,bright sun,etc damaging the unit.
They are more interested in what temp they are cooking at.

Think of a large cooker,holding 32 butts of slightly different weight/size.

A temp probe in the small one,in a hot spot,could guide you to start checking the others as they come tender.Could be over three hours.

It is a good idea to check the accuracy of your therm and check the ACTUAL cooking temps at different spots in the cooker.This helps your experience with where to place different meats.

As to variations in all your probes,I'm not sure what that tells you,except which ones to throw away.

Relax and enjoy the cook.Butts are hard to ruin and temps could vary anyway.

What Tom said!

Hey guys thanks for all your replies. As a EE, I have a hard time dealing with "inconsistencies" across equipment. What can I say . . it is a work in progress . . perhaps some liberal liquid spirits would/will reduce my exacting nature . . guess I'll try a few and see.

Thanks again you'all


William

The probes won't be in the same location in the meat or even in the same pork butt so you have to expect variations. Different parts of the same butt will be at different temperatures. May not be anything wrong with the probes. Test them in ice water/boiling water, and if they're within a couple degrees of each other, don't worry about it.

William,

It's BBQ. Relax, take a deep breath. We've seen your type before Certainly have seen those that like to graph the full smoke with a laptop, etc.

It's BBQ, make it as fancy as you need to but it isn't that complicated.

Oh and what Tom said...

Now, you don't need three probes (trust me I think the new probes are expensive)

You could easily buy "remote" probe thermometer if you want to.

My last advice. Temp is a goal, not an exact thing. You won't be successful in BBQ if you try to Q like it's a bread recipe.

Temp is a guide, but there is such variation in meat, there will always be differences.

Tenderness is what you'll learn with experience.

Like Smokin' said, and somethings have to do with cooking the meat well,and others are merely distractions,
Living by the FL space center,we had folks that really enjoyed inventing devices to spreadsheet internal temps,ambient temps,cooker temps,average,or exact,time lines for varying weight/size,at varying temps,. etc.

Share them with friends around the world in real time.

Soon,they were frustrated that their product never turned out well and gave away their cooker.

Turns out that a pig couldn't read a therm unit,or use a computer,so all the info was less useful than what color T shirt the cook was wearing.

Many good cooks really just use remote therms to be sure the cooker is running and rely on their own experience [which is where a therm guides us] to turn out excellent/consistent food.

Just a couple of thoughts.