DeclanFleming
New member
Hi - I'm pretty new to the community, but I've learned a lot by reading here before I joined. Thanks so much to all for sharing what you do, it really helped out a n00b like me.
In that spirit, I'll share some failures and a success that might help other Akorn (or other kamado?) users. Check out my cook from last night:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/fe6arq2209s8148/AkornHM1.JPG?dl=0 (not sure how to inline an image... the button above didn't work)
It was a brisket, and I knew it'd take 12-16 hrs, so I was excited to get my HeaterMeter to run the Akorn smoker over night. I'd had a few successful, shorter cooks with the HM, so I figured this was cake.
Well, as the graph shows, it was not - at first. My temp control was all over the place, and eventually I snuffed the whole thing out. I figured it had to be an airflow problem, so I googled around like crazy, and found people talking about how much lump they use for a cook. I'd learned that the Akorn uses very little fuel during my earlier cooks, so I'd worked my way through a bag of lump very slowly up to this point. I had another bag of lump ready to go for this big cook, so I dumped what was left of the old bag into the Akorn, and added a bit of new stuff from the new bag. Then I set a small fire in the middle, fired up the HM, and sat back. That led to the drama you see on the left of the graph.
Eventually I read about people leaving a portion of the bottom grate of the Akorn completely free of lump to help with airflow. So pulled the meat, grill, stone, and started shifting lump around til I thought I saw the problem. When I dumped the original bag of lump into the kamado, it was primarily smaller pieces. These filtered down and basically blocked all of the gaps in the bottom grate, killing airflow. So, I carved out a wedge of space with no lump (maybe a 15 degree pie wedge of free space), restarted the fire, plonked the stone, grill, and meat back down and wondered at the lovely (mostly) straight line for the rest of the night. Well, I actually went to bed, but I did wake up a few times to check the temp (and see if my deck was on fire).
What an awesome device! I was able to sleep, then wake to a huge chunk of brisket that I could bring in to a mid-week potluck at work. It's one of the main reasons I got the kit, and I'm a very happy customer.
Some other thoughts:
I've read about dampers, but so far I've just rubber banded my fan to the bottom air vent handle/tab and closed the vent down so just the blower part of the fan sticks in. This seems to work great. The top vent is just the dimples, or a little less. Saw this idea here: https://www.kamadoguru.com/topic/5842-heatermeter-on-akorn/
I've done a number of pork shoulders since getting the HM, and it's really neat to see the "stall" in the meat probe temp line. I see no stall in the brisket line above though! It looks like a pretty straight climb. Wonder why.
Thanks again for all the help here!
D
In that spirit, I'll share some failures and a success that might help other Akorn (or other kamado?) users. Check out my cook from last night:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/fe6arq2209s8148/AkornHM1.JPG?dl=0 (not sure how to inline an image... the button above didn't work)
It was a brisket, and I knew it'd take 12-16 hrs, so I was excited to get my HeaterMeter to run the Akorn smoker over night. I'd had a few successful, shorter cooks with the HM, so I figured this was cake.
Well, as the graph shows, it was not - at first. My temp control was all over the place, and eventually I snuffed the whole thing out. I figured it had to be an airflow problem, so I googled around like crazy, and found people talking about how much lump they use for a cook. I'd learned that the Akorn uses very little fuel during my earlier cooks, so I'd worked my way through a bag of lump very slowly up to this point. I had another bag of lump ready to go for this big cook, so I dumped what was left of the old bag into the Akorn, and added a bit of new stuff from the new bag. Then I set a small fire in the middle, fired up the HM, and sat back. That led to the drama you see on the left of the graph.
Eventually I read about people leaving a portion of the bottom grate of the Akorn completely free of lump to help with airflow. So pulled the meat, grill, stone, and started shifting lump around til I thought I saw the problem. When I dumped the original bag of lump into the kamado, it was primarily smaller pieces. These filtered down and basically blocked all of the gaps in the bottom grate, killing airflow. So, I carved out a wedge of space with no lump (maybe a 15 degree pie wedge of free space), restarted the fire, plonked the stone, grill, and meat back down and wondered at the lovely (mostly) straight line for the rest of the night. Well, I actually went to bed, but I did wake up a few times to check the temp (and see if my deck was on fire).
What an awesome device! I was able to sleep, then wake to a huge chunk of brisket that I could bring in to a mid-week potluck at work. It's one of the main reasons I got the kit, and I'm a very happy customer.
Some other thoughts:
I've read about dampers, but so far I've just rubber banded my fan to the bottom air vent handle/tab and closed the vent down so just the blower part of the fan sticks in. This seems to work great. The top vent is just the dimples, or a little less. Saw this idea here: https://www.kamadoguru.com/topic/5842-heatermeter-on-akorn/
I've done a number of pork shoulders since getting the HM, and it's really neat to see the "stall" in the meat probe temp line. I see no stall in the brisket line above though! It looks like a pretty straight climb. Wonder why.
Thanks again for all the help here!
D