Post your live HeaterMeter Cooks


 
The Akorn is just a machine in bad weather! I keep mine around just for cooking in the bad weather, UDS and WSM don't work as well with their thin body walls
 
RalphTrimble said:
Looks like you've got a nice cook going there, steady as she goes!
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Yes, overall, pretty good. I had kind of lost my faith a little after my last disastrous cook. About seven hours in, my pit started losing temp rapidly. I go outside to check on it, the damper is wide open, the fan is blowing, but the temps continue to fall. I opened it up and the fire was out?!?!?!?! Had never had that happen to me before with the Akorn / HM / RotoDamper before. Was totally perplexed. I didn't relish the idea of setting everything up again and running manual, so I ashamedly finished it in the oven.

The next time I went to cook, I set up as normal and noticed that the fire wasn't coming up to temp per usual. Got really mad and went to check on what was going on and, once again, the damper was wide open but the fan WASNT blowing. Looked at it and it appears that sometime in the previous cook the hot lead to the fan had gotten yanked so that the connection was intermittent. I re-soldered it and away we go. Now, the wires are firmly attached to the fan casing with a hefty amount of electrical tape. That isn't going to happen again.


SteveCK said:
The Akorn is just a machine in bad weather! I keep mine around just for cooking in the bad weather, UDS and WSM don't work as well with their thin body walls
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Yes. Yes it is. I have successfully smoked with my WSM 22" in the very cold, it just takes a *massive* amount of fuel. So much so, I made a custom charcoal basket that extends almost to the bottom of the water pan. If I need to do large quantities, I'm covered.

One day I will be able to put my MicroDampers to use. I had originally bought them for my smaller guys (Akorn Jr. / Smokey Joe conversion) for battery-powered camping use but we ended up not taking them camping with us because life.
 
Can't wait to get this going tomorrow!
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AND They're inverted!
 
http://173.21.210.134:922

Brinkmann Long Trail horizontal offset (Oklahoma Joe) smoker. WBegg's thermocouple up in the top of the pit, Thermoworks thermistor probes. Tom Kole's barrel servo/fan stuff. Rockwood lump charcoal with hickory chunks. Ambient temperature at the start was 32 degrees F. Oh, for the most important part..... 2 10.5 lb briskets for a whiskey tasting party tonight. Following Aaron Franklin's brisket method (which reminds me.... gotta make sauce yet today.)
 
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Got the whole family coming over tomorrow for my son's b-day party.

https://bbq.ww0.ca/

Heatermeter 4.2 running Release firmware*
Offset Rotary Damper
PID = 2.5, 0.0034, 4

* I was running the snapshot and saw some odd things going on with my TC probe. The temps were bouncing around +/- about 4 degrees. I attempted to downgrade the software but something happened and it didn't come back. I prepped a new SD card with the release version instead of the snapshot, swapped it in and was back up and running in about 10 minutes. Turns out the TC probe was still a little wonky, so I'll go back to the snapshot version when this cook is done tomorrow.

For those of you who haven't saved your configs, you really need to. If nothing else, save the "Full configuration URL" at the bottom of the config screen. This will let you put back all of your Probe, Servo, Fan and Alarm setpoint configs in a single command.

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All done!

~20 hours at 230 and everything went smooth. The temps shot up a bit hortly after I opened the lid this morning to have a peek ( bad boy! )

The lime green temps were accurate. The light blue temps were on a prob that wasn't placed properly, so it was getting too much heat from the pit, throwing its temps off.

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Initially had it at 225, and then raised it to 235, then realized it was going to get done too soon and turned it down to 200 :D

It's working GREAT! AWESOME JOB Bryan!!
 
I'm currently doing my first cook with a HeaterMeter - http://82.1.88.111/

Doing a small rack of beef ribs and it's taking longer than I'd expected… is ~6f/hr normal..? Started off at 225f now pushed it up to 250f.

EDIT: In fact the ribs' temperature seems to have stalled and is now even dropping. The internal temperature is now exactly the same as it was an hour ago… what's going on there then??
 
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Your link doesn't work for me, but depending on size 6 hours is about right. It's not unusual to see a stall, and depending on a bunch of conditions (humidity is a big one) it's not out of the norm for the temp to come down a degree or two during a stall since your meat is undergoing evaporative cooling - which means your meat is sweating and the convection in your pit is pulling the sweat off of it. It's just like how you get cold when you get out of a swimming pool. Just hang in there and don't pull the meat until it probes done.
 
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