stoker first try


 
G

Greg Lousteau

New member
So, i've been playing with the stoker in the house for a few days and Amirs software (thanks, it is great!)

I plan to cook 4 butts next weekend (overnight), so I wanted to give it a trial run today. Put on some ribs just now, target temp of 215 w/o a meat probe. Just using the stoker to maintain my egg temp.

2 Questions:
1) I put the meat on, and as expected I had a dip in temp and the fan ran like crazy to correct the temp. It did and it overshot, got up to 235 when my target is 215. Should I do something differently next time? or is this expected? I really don't think it will affect the cook, but wanted to see if there was a "better" way to do this.

2) I have auto lid detection on, but when i was putting the ribs on, i heard the fan kick on. Are the default values of 8/5 good numbers, or do I need to tweak them?

this is pretty cool stuff
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I'll post my graph later on when my ribs are done.

thanks
Greg
 
I add the lit coals, add the food and then start the stoker. So the stoker brings the smoker with the food up to temperature. The way you did it should work once you get the open lid detect dialed in for your smoker. I believe Amir is using a ceramic too so default settings should be close for you. The other thing you can do is manually turn off the stoker for 5 minutes after adding food.
 
Ditto what A. says. I use my Stoker on ceramic also and throw my lit on my unlit, put meat on, close cooker and turn Stoker on and let her take it from there. You'll have to figure out the proper top vent setting for your cooker but once you get that dialed in you're set.

EDIT: Thought I'd ad while the Stoker is bringing the cooker up to temp I have my damper open more than my final cooking position. When Stoker has cooker about 20 degrees below my desired cook temp I close damper to my final cooking position. Works like a champ every time.
 
Thanks for the tips. Here is my graph, the lid detection only occured once... I don't have a good feeling for which parameters I need to adjust to get it to work every time I open the lid. The major spikes are from when I opened the lid to mist the ribs with apple juice...

first_cook_ribs.jpg
 
Lid detection logic is too simple right now. I had a more complicated routine but didn't work right so I put in the current mechanism. If you tune it, it should work most of the time.

One of these days I will rewrite it to make it adaptive so that you don't have to mess with it....
 
Can you elaborate on what the two configuration parameters do so I have an idea of what to tweak to make it work better? I'm doing 4 butts Friday night on the egg, so I don't plan to open it, but was just curiuos as to what they 2 configuration parameters do.
 
The documentation is in the help file
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But briefly, the first parameter is the threshold for detecting lid being open. If the temp drops faster than that number per second, it assumes the lid has been openned. Look at your graph and see how fast the drop is. If you make this number too small, you may get false alarms. If it is too big, you won't detect it. False alarms can be dealt with by not setting the flag all the time -- only set it before ou go out to mess with the fire.

False alarms are nasty in that the temp drops and the fire may go out. Hence the reason the current setting is rather conservative.

The second number has nothing to do with the detection. It simply is in the number of minutes stokerlog keeps the fan from running.
 
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