First smoke and therm question

I'm doing my first smoke and I'm almost 2.5 hrs into it. I have an oven therm on the grate and it says 250 while my lid therm is at 215, a diff of 35 degrees. Which one should I go by?

What kind of lid therm you using? Anyway the lid temp should read higher than the grate temp. Did you check the lid therm in boiling water for accuracy? If not I would do that to see how accurate it is. You can test the oven therm as I'm guessing it's one of those therms that sits on the oven rack?

As time went on, I didn't want to open the lid so I just watched the therm on the lid. All was good and was some of the best Mr Brown I'd ever done. Sure beats the All In One ECB.

<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by Frabe:
As time went on, I didn't want to open the lid so I just watched the therm on the lid. All was good and was some of the best Mr Brown I'd ever done. Sure beats the All In One ECB. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

sounds like you figured out the secret in the first cook!! temp doesnt matter nearly as much as most make it out to be. a steady temp between 225-300 is all you need whatever that temp is doesnt matter as much as keeping the same temp the whole cook.

I have the new WSM with the built in therm. I was kind of stuck in a rock and a hard place since I was going for a long bike ride Sunday morning. I wanted to start early enough Saturday night that I could fix any trouble but it meant that it might be finishing in the middle of my ride, and it did. I had to call home and have my wife shut the vents when it was at 195 and I was still an hour away. The Minion Method worked like a charm and thanks to everyone here I was able to anticipate temp changes and how to work the vents. Thanks to everyone!