Stoker smoke with Rancher briquettes


 
J

Jim Smithson

TVWBB Fan
I had a strange experience with my first smoke today with the Rancher briquettes (the ones on sale at HD).

The temperature would cycle +/- 30F throughout the smoke. It appeared to overshoot, then the stoker would close everything down, temperature would drop about 10F under the target, then the fan would crank it up and overshoot again.

Here is a plot of part of the cook.



Anyone else see this with this charcoal? There was really nothing else new here...
 
Jim,

I had a large cook on Sat. with 2 WSM's and Gurus using Rancher. Couldn't have been any steader, in fact I just got one of the units back from Guru, so I was watching it very caerfully.
 
I remember, shortly after RocksBBQ started selling the Stoker, questioning why their unit’s pit temp would oscillate as much as it did, much as you described. Someone, I believe associated with the Stoker (can’t remember for sure though), replied that this problem had been corrected with a software revision. Well, I just checked their website and the same jpg I saw before shows a good 20 to 25º oscillation in the WSM pit temp while using their unit is still there. The full sized graph is shown below and here’s a link to a copy from their website which was good when I posted this. Now, I’m not trying to bash the Stoker here but it seems this has been an issue with some users for a while; granted, many have posted they have rock solid temperature control.

Just my 2¢

Bill

Edit: Corrected link URL

wsmgraphre3.jpg
 
Odd as I have had the Stoker for 6 months and the temps are normally rock solid. I might experiment more with the vents next time...I could have actually closed the top vent too much and that caused it....it is probably proportional to how large a fire you have etc.

More experiments next time.
 
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