First cook with my new Stoker. I have some questions.

I've been grilling for years, used the rotisserie many times but never had a dedicated smoker, so about 6 weeks ago, I bought a WSM 18.5. I've cooked ribs twice, turkey twice, Steelhead Trout 3 times and a pork shoulder. Everything has come out great, but I found myself going out and constantly tweaking the vents to either ramp the temp up when the it dipped below 215 and sometimes readjusting when it ramped up above 270. When I say constantly, I mean every hour to two hours. I'm sure if I had more patience I would have learned where the sweet spot was with both coals (I've been using the Minion Method) and vents and not needed an ATC, but I wanted to be able to load it up and simply leave it alone especially for overnight cooks. A co-worker of mine has a digiQ and he told me his temp remains steady for 18+ hours. So, after some research, I went with the Stoker. Yesterday, I used it for the first time cooking my first brisket. I have a couple of questions:

1. I set everything up, got my coals going, turned on the Stoker and connected to it using Stokerlog. I set the fire pit probe temp to 230 and the food probe pit to 195. After about 45 min, the temp seemed to be pretty steady and I put on the Brisket. The temp dropped, which is normal and the Stoker fan came on, went off, came on, went off, definitely doing it's job but the temperature fluctuation would dip to about 215, then go as high 250 and this went on for about an hour and a half or so. The temp stability was anywhere from fair to good. However, it finally started to settle in after this and hovered around the 230 mark for the remaining 11 hours of the cook and the temp stability read "great". Is this normal? Should I have waiting longer before adding the brisket?

2. I experienced a problem about about 3 hours into the cook. I started this process about 6:00 am in the morning and had the meat on around 7:00 am. So I was drinking my coffee, ate some breakfast all the while reading some articles on my PC and keeping track of the Stokerlog. Once I felt everything was going good, I decided I needed to get my lazy butt into the shower and start doing something with the day while my Brisket was cooking. When I came back to my PC, I realized my power settings had put my PC to sleep and when I woke it up the Stokerlog had lost connectivity to the Stoker. I panicked a bit because I wasn't sure if that would have caused anything to reset within the Stoker itself but it appeared the it had retained the temp settings. The problem was that I couldn't get Stokerlog to reconnect to the Stoker. I also tried getting the built in web app to connect but that wouldn't either. I went outside and double checked the temp settings which seemed ok and checked the Wifi IP which was still there. I then tried pinging the Stoker from my PC and that worked fine as well, but no matter how many times I tried, I couldn't get the web app or Stokerlog to connect. I went outside, power reset the Stoker and tried again and that fixed the problem. I changed my power settings on my PC so that wouldn't happen again but wondered if that was normal? It seemed odd.

3. Everything went great for the next 8 hours. I did some chores around the house, watched some TV and checked in on my Stokerlog from time to time. The Brisket finally reached 195 and I was deciding whether to pull it or let it go to 200. I've read so many different opinions on which Temp to hit as well as doing a visual test, but this was my first brisket so I wasn't sure what to look for visually and I was really using this cook to get a feel for the Stoker so I decided to let it go a bit longer. I watched some TV for about 30 minutes and went to check the Stokerlog and noticed my stupid PC had power reset. This PC is running Windows 8.1 and is about a month old so I'm not sure if it had gone out and did some sort of automatic Windows update or what, but when I got Stokerlog back up and running, again, it wouldn't reconnect with the Stoker. This time was a bit different. Earlier in the day when I lost connectivity, when I tried to reconnect with Stokerlog after my PC went to sleep, Stokerlog would say it was trying to connect then it would go into a "not responding" situation where I had to actually use Task Manager to kill. This time around when I tried to reconnect, the Stokerlog simply said connection failed or unable to connect (I can't remember exactly) and it was in red. The Web app wouldn't connect either. I went outside, power reset the Stoker but this time, that didn't fix the problem. It seemed to connect to my Wifi just fine. I was able to Ping the Stoker but Stokerlog refused to connect to it. The Web app wouldn't either. I power reset it again but no go. I checked the pit temp from the front panel of the Stoker and it was reading above 250 yet the fan was on and wouldn't shut off. I checked the blower setting on the front panel and it didn't show the blower (I had named it Blower 1) so I was thinking the Stoker had lost it's settings. I decided to call it a day and pulled off the brisket. The brisket turned out wonderful so I was pleased but still not sure what had happened. I rechecked everything this morning and like magic, the Stoker worked just fine with Stokerlog and the Stoker still had the settings of 230 and 195 from yesterday. Any ideas on what happened?

I know this was a long post but wanted to give some detail. Overall, I love the Stoker. I was able to run at a steady temp at 230 for over 12 hours without touching the WSM once. I started with a full ring of coals with a few chunks of Apple and Pecan. I was planning on letting it run to see how long the coals would last but with the connection problems occurring at the end of the cook I just called it a day. Is everyone using Stokerlog? Does anyone use any of the Apple apps instead? I have both an Iphone and Ipad. Any answers to the above questions would be greatly appreciated.

TVanDyke,

I've had my Stoker for about 6 months and LOVE IT!! It is literally set-it and forget-it, at least for me. I too notice the fluctuation in temps for about a good 30-60 minutes, sometimes longer since I've been using it during the coldest winter of my 39 years of living!! That part never bothers me as I know it's still plus or minus 25 degrees and I'm ok with that (eventhough it's rarely that far from my target). So in my opinion, don't sweat the fluctuation.

As far as the Stokerlog.....I do use it all the time and have never had any issues with it what-so-ever. I had adjusted my computer to not power-down prior to using the Stoker the first time as I read somewhere that would be an issue. I also use the BBQ Monitor app for my iPhone and it works flawless as well. So I really can't offer up any advice about your Stokerlog issues, other than once you change your power settings you should be good to go!

One question......do you dial into the Stoker by typing the IP address into the address line to control it? Even if the Stokerlog goes down, you should still be able to dial into the Stoker's IP and monitor and control it there. Just a thought....

Good luck!

Tim

Thanks for the reply Tim. I did try to connect without Stokerlog simply using my web browser, but that also failed. I've been thinking about it and it's very possible that when my PC went to sleep and later on when it rebooted that it received a different IP address from my router. I'm assuming that every device on my LAN, including the Stoker builds an ARP table (where it associates a MAC Address with an IP Address) and that the Stoker was still trying to reply back to my MAC address on a different IP based on what it had in it's ARP cache. However, I don't believe a PING would have been successful either and that somehow worked. Yesterday, I hard coded an IP Address to the Stokers MAC address in my Router but I should probably do the same for my PC now that I think about it. We have about 12 devices connected to our Wireless LAN (IMac, PC's, PS3, Smart TV, IPhones, IPADs, a NAS device, Printer and now the Stoker). I'm sure they're always getting different IP's all the time. I think it's why we sometimes lose connectivity to our Printer and have to reboot the router. I suppose I should have tried to connect to the Stoker from my IPad or IPhone. I don't have one of the Apps, but I could have tried from the browser. You say you have BBQ Monitor, have you tried the other one, Stokemaster? Are you able to connect to the Stoker with both Stokerlog and BBQ Monitor at the same time without problems?

Thanks, Tom.

Tom,

I have not tried the Stokemaster app. I use the BBQ Monitor and Stokerlog at the same time and have no issues. If I'm too lazy to get off my chair to look at the computer is when I open the BBQ Monitor app and see what's going on. I have not been able to set it up to where I can check the Stoker when I'm outside my WiFi though. I know there's a way, but I'm not that techy yet! Also, my Stoker is hardwired into my router so I don't have to deal with my Wifi. Once, my Wifi was down, but I was still able to use the Stokerlog despite having no internet access. The Stoker is a great machine and I'm SO glad I have it!!

Tim

The fluctuations early on with Stoker are normal -- it's basically "learning". The more you use it, the more "dialed in" it gets. I've had my Stoker for about 6 years - I use it at home as well as competitions. It's pretty well dialed in now and will usually hold my temps +/- 2 degrees of my target temp. I just love looking at the Stokerlog graph and seeing a pretty straight line for the temp. And yes, as you have discovered, if something goes wrong with your computer, it should have no affect on the Stoker out by the smoker. Stokerlog is just reading the data from the Stoker -- so as long as the Stoker has not lost power, it will continue to maintain it's settings and keeping your cook going on track. As far as the Stoker loosing the association to the blower, that is very rare. Hopefully you won't see that issue happen again.

Tim D. said:

Tom,

I have not tried the Stokemaster app. I use the BBQ Monitor and Stokerlog at the same time and have no issues. If I'm too lazy to get off my chair to look at the computer is when I open the BBQ Monitor app and see what's going on. I have not been able to set it up to where I can check the Stoker when I'm outside my WiFi though. I know there's a way, but I'm not that techy yet! Also, my Stoker is hardwired into my router so I don't have to deal with my Wifi. Once, my Wifi was down, but I was still able to use the Stokerlog despite having no internet access. The Stoker is a great machine and I'm SO glad I have it!!

Tim

Click to expand...

I went into my Netgear router yesterday and under "attached devices" I was able to map a permanent IP Address to the Stoker's MAC Address. Once you do that, all you have to do is configure Port Forwarding for the IP Address that is tied to your Stoker. If you're outside of your home, all you have to do is type in the IP Address that your ISP assigned to you in your browser and it will forward the request to your Stoker. It takes about 10 minutes once you actually get into your router (of course all routers are going to have a different configuration interface). If you go to your WAN configuration inside your router, you'll see the IP Address your ISP has given the router. The hardest part is remembering that IP Address since it's not something you would ever really have to remember otherwise. It's like remembering your own phone number. How often do you call yourself. I'm assuming that you'd be able to do the same with your IPhone App as well, but you'd have to change what the Stoker IP is to your Router WAN IP once Port Forwarding is mapped to your Stoker's IP. Obviously, if you're on your loccal LAN, you'd still access the normal Stoker IP.

Steve Story said:

The fluctuations early on with Stoker are normal -- it's basically "learning". The more you use it, the more "dialed in" it gets. I've had my Stoker for about 6 years - I use it at home as well as competitions. It's pretty well dialed in now and will usually hold my temps +/- 2 degrees of my target temp. I just love looking at the Stokerlog graph and seeing a pretty straight line for the temp. And yes, as you have discovered, if something goes wrong with your computer, it should have no affect on the Stoker out by the smoker. Stokerlog is just reading the data from the Stoker -- so as long as the Stoker has not lost power, it will continue to maintain it's settings and keeping your cook going on track. As far as the Stoker loosing the association to the blower, that is very rare. Hopefully you won't see that issue happen again.

Click to expand...

That's good to know. Like I said, it leveled off pretty good the last 8 hours of the cook and only fluctuated about +/- 5 degrees or so.

Tom,

Thanks for the advice.....I'll give it shot!

Tim