First cook using Billows with Smoke X4


 
DanHoo

DanHoo

TVWBB Olympian
In short, it was fantastic.

though the cook was on my BGE, I wanted to share how well this worked.

I cooked a pork loin, and not having to think twice about temps was great.

I started lump in a chimney. dumped it, and let the grill heat up to about 300F and then choked it down, added 6 chunks of Weber Applewood, added the heat shield and grate. I choked it down too much and temps dropped to about 130F, but anyway I plugged in the billows, set it to 250F opened the top vents up for a few mins and soon it was around 220F. I closed the top vents almost completely and the billows was pushing smoke out everywhere.

When the temp got to about 240F the fan on the billows shut off and it coasted a bit, and then the fan pulsed a few times and pretty soon it settled in a degree or two above or below 250. I let it settle for about 10 -15 mins while the smoke thinned and became lighter.

Pork loin went on, alarms were set and it was on autopilot for the next 90 mins.

once the pork loin hit 130 I unplugged the billows, and the temp probes and finished things off with manual adjustments.

I'm looking forward to using it for more.
 
Thanks for sharing - the T-Works billows system works great for me. Nice pics too.

What brand of wood chunks do you have there?
 
Looks great Dan, nice cook. I run the Billows as well on my WSM, only I control with the Signals.

Great job!

Charlie
 
John K BBQ said:
Thanks for sharing - the T-Works billows system works great for me. Nice pics too.

What brand of wood chunks do you have there?
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Thanks John.

Lowes has this usually. It's pretty mild and worked well with chunks of weber applewood.
 
C Lewis said:
Looks great Dan, nice cook. I run the Billows as well on my WSM, only I control with the Signals.

Great job!

Charlie
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Thanks Charlie.

I read several posts about signals and billows which is why I started researching temp controllers.

I chose the smoke x4 over the signals so I would not need a phone or a tablet. I like the remote showing the temps.

But signals looks cool too. I think the temp history avail using the app is one thing I might use.

If TW made a wifi gateway for the X4, I'd put it on my list. Even if it was a one way read only view of data.
 
There's advantages to both. I went with signals, because you can control the unit through the cloud. The temp graph is nice. I debated this pretty hard because I see the advantages of going with the Smoke x4. I think the Smoke x4 is way more bulletproof. I've got the older smoke with the WIFI gateway as well though.
 
I love my X4 and Billows. Use it on my Summit charcoal and it just rocks. Pretty solid
 
The X2 and Billows work great on my WSM 18.

Doesn't have all the bells/whistles of the Signals, but very simple, reliable and works right out of the box.
 
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