First cook with LinkMeter


 

Dennis C

TVWBB Fan
Did my first cook using the LM. I made a Pork Butt. I decided to slice instead of pull it so cooked it to 185. The unit worked great and the fan came on when needed.

The only problem I had is with was controlling the Temperature of the cooker itself. I closed all the vents on the bottom except the one with the fan on it. I used a dog dish bowl that fit over the entire vent pretty tight. Drilled a square and stuck the fan in tightly. The top vent was open. The temp kept going up. The temp was up to 250 before too long and climbing. I started to close the top vent to bring it down. I pretty much had it closed all the way. The temps started to drop slowly. I got it to hover around the 227 range that I had it set to. I didn't want to keep the top vents closed. I read that closing the top vent is not recommended? I opened the vent a little more and the temps started to rapidly climb. It got up to 280 degrees before I decided to close the vent again and this time I removed some coals.

Suggestions?

- I used the minion method. Filled the charcoal ring completely with Kingsford competition and a few blues. I lit 20 coals and dumped them all over. I put 4 chunks of Peach wood and put the cover on and immediately put the meat on.

Next cook is a brisket so want to get the best use out of the LM as possible on it.
 
You have too much air getting into the bottom of the smoker. Either around the bowl or through the fan. You may want to look into sealing all the gaps.

I know for my smoker, I installed a ball valve so that I could restrict the air supply because it would get to hot just do to the convention pulling air through the stopped fan. Adding a "damper" to the fan is quite common.

I open the valve to the point where natural convection would have the smoker about 20 degrees cooler than what I want to cook at. Then the fan is used to bring it up that last 20 degrees.

Hopefully that makes sense.

dave
 
My only suggestion would be less fuel. Closing off the top vent can help shut the fire down, but the smoke can get stale in there if you block it off and it'll make a bad flavor.

I'm a bit worried about this on my rig, but so far I have not had any problems keeping 225-250 with just some manual tweaks every half hour or so. I typically pile in a good amount of charcoal and then pour on one "charcoal tower thing" worth of white burning coals.

I've noticed that big chunks of wood will tend to add a bit of heat, but they settle down pretty quickly typically.
 
If I keep my top vent open, the convection will let the temperature right past the 225F setpoint and on up to 300-350F and sort of come down over 4-5 hours. I keep my top vent on my egg open just enough that a toothpick can fit into the holes. A damper on the fan might help allow a larger leeway on the top vent, that's something I'd like to investigate with my next fan mount. I've also considered replacing my top vent with an exhaust fan spring loaded damper, but those tend to be leakier and require larger static pressure to open so I'm not sure if they'd be any use.
 
Thanks for the suggestions. The LM works great and it was a successful test. Ran fine for over 12+ hours. When I finally got the temp around 227 the fan did come on. So I guess now it is just playing around. I'll probably order those gaskets from eBay anyway to be on the safe side. Although I did have one problem, I blew out the power supply when I tried to put the LM inside the router. The router and the LM were so hot. Luckily I have spare power supplies from Linksys access points that seemed to work just fine.

Too much fuel could be the problem. I probably should put the coals in the dead center and let it branch out. I'll try that next time.

Leaving the top vent only slightly open is ok? It won't add bad flavor?
 

 

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