thermometer Mods


 

D. Dix

TVWBB Member
Hey everyone!

I'm a new WSM owner (18.5") and have seen some great & easy mods I have already done before my first cook. The last thing I am considering is a better hood thermometer. I looking at the Tel Tru BQ225 with either a 2.5" stem or a 4" stem. I have little concerns overall about temp control, I am more concerned about the stem sticking down to far into the hood. Any thoughts?

Everything I have seen on your sight is awesome. So many WSM enthusiasts and so far it's been great. I look forward to sharing my joys and pains of BBQ'ng with ya'all. Thanks for putting this together. What a valuable resource! I'm new to all of this, so I pray I'm doing this right?
Blessings!
D. Dix:
 
Welcome to the forum and to WSM ownership! You're going to have a good time!

I've had a 4" stem for many years and it never gets in the way of anything. The tallest thing I've cooked is beer can chicken, and you can always position chicken and lid so they don't touch.

Having said that, I've done several retrofits with friends/family and a 2.5" stem works just as well. If I had it to do all over again, I'd go with 2.5".

If you're willing to enlarge the hole in the lid, you can go with the Tel Tru BQ300 with 2.5" stem. This is the one I've used with friends/family and never any complaints!
 
Welcome to the forum and to WSM ownership! You're going to have a good time!

I've had a 4" stem for many years and it never gets in the way of anything. The tallest thing I've cooked is beer can chicken, and you can always position chicken and lid so they don't touch.

Having said that, I've done several retrofits with friends/family and a 2.5" stem works just as well. If I had it to do all over again, I'd go with 2.5".

If you're willing to enlarge the hole in the lid, you can go with the Tel Tru BQ300 with 2.5" stem. This is the one I've used with friends/family and never any complaints!


Thank you Chris. Yours are some of the more consistent posts and ideas I have used. I kind of figured that was about right, just wanted to know if made any difference or hindered things in any way. I appreciate you for responding so quickly. Going to make my Amazon order right now for the 2.5" stem model. So far, I have used mods that do not require any drilling or altering, (not that i'm afraid to do that) it's that i'm just getting started and want to keep things simple. For example: I added the extra charcoal grate w/handles, and added handles to the lower cooking grate. 2 excellent and easy mods to make. Thanks again & be blessed. First cook, I think will be a Pork Butt this weekend!. I'll keep you posted.
 
Ok, so I'll ask a newb WSM question on this. My understanding is that the dome temp will be different, hotter than the top grate or cooking surface, which is hotter than the lower grate. That said, if the dome is reading say 275, would the cooking surface not be closer to around 250? So do you just figure something like, 275 on dome, 250 on grates...good to go Or, do you "calibrate the dome temp gauge to match the temp of the top cooking grate as I saw done in another video?

Thanks.
This is an awesome site!!
 
With experience, you get to know how your WSM is running and how the meat is cooking. My most important tool is the Thermapen that I use to probe meat by hand toward the end of cooking. The lid therm just gives me a sense of where the cooker is at. If it says 275*F, I don't care if it's 250 or 240 or 260 at the grate. I know that if I run the cooker with a lid temp of 250-275, everything's going to be alright.

And no, I don't bother to "calibrate" the lid therm to some imagined temp at the cooking grate. The temp difference is not always 25*F, so how could anyone claim to know an exact difference in degrees to calibrate to? Better to just measure at the grate with a probe therm than to start screwing around with the calibration of a lid therm, IMHO.

I know that the common thinking is that measuring at the cooking grate is "best". I would agree that it's probably most accurate, but it's a hassle, it can get in the way of how you want to arrange meat on the grate, it's sensitive to where you place the probe on the grate, and I've found over the years that measuring at the grate just doesn't matter to me in how I make barbecue. Besides, my home oven doesn't measure temp at the oven grate and somehow I'm able to successfully bake a cake or roast a chicken. Why does temp measurement in my backyard barbecue pit need to be more accurate than my home oven?
 
I have a Maverick with both a food and a grate probe.
If I'm concerned about cook temp I just dangle the grate probe down through a top vent hole.
Like Chris, I'm not overly concerned about exact temps, ballpark works for me too.
IMO barbecuing should be fun, not fretful.
 
I use a maverick also and I don't get to excited if I get 40-50 degree swings which for some reason my 18.5 WSM loves to do. Yesterday I made pepper stout beef and used Royal Oak for the first time. It took two lit small chimneys to get it up to 225 after an hour with all the vents wide open on the WSM. That was with the rest of the bag included. Well about the three hour mark the other coals finally got lit and the temp went from 225 to 385 in about 5 minuets.
Glad I was watching it remotely.
 
Well about the three hour mark the other coals finally got lit and the temp went from 225 to 385 in about 5 minuets.
Glad I was watching it remotely.

Water helps prevent fast temperature swings, and high temps since it doesn't get any hotter than its boiling point.
 
Thank you Chris. Yours are some of the more consistent posts and ideas I have used. I kind of figured that was about right, just wanted to know if made any difference or hindered things in any way. I appreciate you for responding so quickly. Going to make my Amazon order right now for the 2.5" stem model. So far, I have used mods that do not require any drilling or altering, (not that i'm afraid to do that) it's that i'm just getting started and want to keep things simple. For example: I added the extra charcoal grate w/handles, and added handles to the lower cooking grate. 2 excellent and easy mods to make. Thanks again & be blessed. First cook, I think will be a Pork Butt this weekend!. I'll keep you posted.

Can you post pictures of those mods?
 
I didn't take pics of the mods, but I can tell you I got everything from TVWBB's "WSM mods" "thermometer mods" all the pics are there and they are easy to do. I chose to do all mods that didn't require drilling the unit. It's not that I was afraid to do that, its just as a "newbie" it made more sense to keep it simple and not do something that would have to be modified again to fix. Just didn't make sense to me.

I installed a Tel Tru BQ225 2" thermometer with a 2.5" stem, over the existing bezel in the dome. (Thanks Chris) I added a 13.5" charcoal grate in the ring and made handles using U bolts with flat washers as shown in the mods. (Did that with the lower food grate as well) the charcoal ring/grates w/handles are now 1 unit that easily shakes out ash, stays put without moving around. Excellent & easy mod! Lastly, I did my first cook at Noon on Sunday with a 7lb. Pork Butt for my "first cook". It turned out great. I used Weber briquettes, so this will serve as a review of them as well. The cook went very well. I dealt with some wind, which I expected and it kept the WSM from getting over 275 degrees at any one time. I used the minion method with a 1/2 load of briquettes. I started a compact chimney and in 15 minutes they were ready and I was off to the races! It was up to 250 temp by 1:00pm I added 2 chunks of hickory and the butt went on. I checked it at about 6:00 pm and wrapped in foil, and it finished by 8:00.

I shut the unit down and checked it in the morning and was surprised to find plenty of fuel left, (about a chimney load) so I fired that up, removed the water pan and finished up with "seasoning". that small batch lasted 3-4 hrs. Very impressed overall with the WSM & Weber charcoal briquettes. Very consistent and even burn. The day 2 burn got up to about 350- 370 degrees, with even more wind and no water pan, and held for the time mentioned. Overall, very successful start to bbq'g with my new WSM. Thanks again to everybody who contributes to this site, your insights and help were invaluable to me and made for a great & stress-free experience!
 
I didn't take pics of the mods, but I can tell you I got everything from TVWBB's "WSM mods" "thermometer mods" all the pics are there and they are easy to do. I chose to do all mods that didn't require drilling the unit. It's not that I was afraid to do that, its just as a "newbie" it made more sense to keep it simple and not do something that would have to be modified again to fix. Just didn't make sense to me.

I installed a Tel Tru BQ225 2" thermometer with a 2.5" stem, over the existing bezel in the dome. (Thanks Chris) I added a 13.5" charcoal grate in the ring and made handles using U bolts with flat washers as shown in the mods. (Did that with the lower food grate as well) the charcoal ring/grates w/handles are now 1 unit that easily shakes out ash, stays put without moving around. Excellent & easy mod! Lastly, I did my first cook at Noon on Sunday with a 7lb. Pork Butt for my "first cook". It turned out great. I used Weber briquettes, so this will serve as a review of them as well. The cook went very well. I dealt with some wind, which I expected and it kept the WSM from getting over 275 degrees at any one time. I used the minion method with a 1/2 load of briquettes. I started a compact chimney and in 15 minutes they were ready and I was off to the races! It was up to 250 temp by 1:00pm I added 2 chunks of hickory and the butt went on. I checked it at about 6:00 pm and wrapped in foil, and it finished by 8:00.

I shut the unit down and checked it in the morning and was surprised to find plenty of fuel left, (about a chimney load) so I fired that up, removed the water pan and finished up with "seasoning". that small batch lasted 3-4 hrs. Very impressed overall with the WSM & Weber charcoal briquettes. Very consistent and even burn. The day 2 burn got up to about 350- 370 degrees, with even more wind and no water pan, and held for the time mentioned. Overall, very successful start to bbq'g with my new WSM. Thanks again to everybody who contributes to this site, your insights and help were invaluable to me and made for a great & stress-free experience!

Glad you had a great cook.
 

 

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