Stokerlog Cook Questions...


 
D

D Arita

TVWBB Fan
Started this cook and all went well. At about 8:30am, I opened the lid to check on the bark, then reset target to 230*. After that, temp rose very slowly, spiked at 9:20, then stayed around there. It's like it had a life of it's own. All the while, no blower.
At 11, I closed the top vent and temp fell to 210, so I opened the vent about 1/8"...temp held at about 225.
Can anyone explain what happened?
 
That usually means the damper is staying open on the blower. Two causes for that:

1. You have installed the blower upside down. When it is off, disconnect it from your smoker and look in there. Rotate and you should see the damper fall. The normal mode is for the damper to be closed.

2. Mine had stuck open due to grease from the fire. Went to release it and the little pin broke
icon_frown.gif
. It was in the middle of a cook no less. So I let it freewheel and fixed it by epoxying a paper clip that I had straightened to act as the hinge. Worked better than before
icon_smile.gif
.

It is also possible you have an air leak some other place. Usually this happens on a windy day. Or perhaps when you closed the lid it didn't close all the way?

OK, too many possibilities but you get the drift on the root cause
icon_smile.gif
.
 
<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by Amir:
That usually means the damper is staying open on the blower. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

I sort of disagree, here at least.

At 8:30, the lid was opened, disrupting an extremely controlled environment that had spent 2 hours regulating itself. That is the last time the fan came on for hours. Upon lid replacement, the now stoked fire did what fires do, generating heat from the new fuel that was now ignited because of more O.

Nothing went crazy, temperature did not continue out of control, it simply rose from 230 to 240, and then rose from 240 to less than 250 for a period of 5 minutes. I would hardly call this a spike, but our definitions and expectations are clearly different. I would call it a residual response to the introduction of Oxygen and consumption of fuel.

Hypothetically, if the lid had NOT been opened, based on the prior graph, we would assume it would have held closer to 230 for quite some time right? I see no reason to think a stuck blower door was the cause. For that to be the case, the blower door would have had to have gotten stuck at the same time the lid was taken off. Not the most likely root cause in my estimation.

Here is the larger point: The stoker did what it is supposed to do at all times. You changed it's environment - a lot - when you opened the lid. It looks like it thought it was done ramping heat, and then you told it the temperature dropped and also introduced a bunch of O. As a result, the smoker warmed up 'a little bit' and for 'a short while'. IE, 10 to 15 degres for 2 hours.

By the way, after a couple hours, that meat is no longer a heat sink like it was earlier. Did the outside sun start helping to warm the cooker later in the morning? Was the ambient temperature different by 10 degrees?

After several years using the stoker, here is one certainty I have learned for myself: The more you fiddle with things, particularly opening the lid, the less stable the temperature is going to be. The second thing I have leaarned is, it is still far more stable than my electric oven. The third thoing I have learned is, the variability of the food I am cooking is much larger than the variability of a 4% temperature swing.
 
Gerd is right
icon_smile.gif
. I thought the temp had risen a lot by itself. But I see that the machine was doing what it thought was right. Since there was such prolonged period of not needing the blower, it erred on the side of caution, waiting a good bit before it turned it back on. In other words, it thought its last action with the blower generated too much flow as to keep the fire going for that long. So it decided to be less aggressive with turning on the fan.
 
<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by Gerd Hilkemeyer:
<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by Amir:
That usually means the damper is staying open on the blower. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

I sort of disagree, here at least.

At 8:30, the lid was opened, disrupting an extremely controlled environment that had spent 2 hours regulating itself. That is the last time the fan came on for hours. Upon lid replacement, the now stoked fire did what fires do, generating heat from the new fuel that was now ignited because of more O.

Nothing went crazy, temperature did not continue out of control, it simply rose from 230 to 240, and then rose from 240 to less than 250 for a period of 5 minutes. I would hardly call this a spike, but our definitions and expectations are clearly different. I would call it a residual response to the introduction of Oxygen and consumption of fuel.

Hypothetically, if the lid had NOT been opened, based on the prior graph, we would assume it would have held closer to 230 for quite some time right? I see no reason to think a stuck blower door was the cause. For that to be the case, the blower door would have had to have gotten stuck at the same time the lid was taken off. Not the most likely root cause in my estimation.

Here is the larger point: The stoker did what it is supposed to do at all times. You changed it's environment - a lot - when you opened the lid. It looks like it thought it was done ramping heat, and then you told it the temperature dropped and also introduced a bunch of O. As a result, the smoker warmed up 'a little bit' and for 'a short while'. IE, 10 to 15 degres for 2 hours.

By the way, after a couple hours, that meat is no longer a heat sink like it was earlier. Did the outside sun start helping to warm the cooker later in the morning? Was the ambient temperature different by 10 degrees?

After several years using the stoker, here is one certainty I have learned for myself: The more you fiddle with things, particularly opening the lid, the less stable the temperature is going to be. The second thing I have leaarned is, it is still far more stable than my electric oven. The third thoing I have learned is, the variability of the food I am cooking is much larger than the variability of a 4% temperature swing. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>
Yes...the ambient temp rose about 10 to 15 degrees. How then, would I be able to keep temps down during transitions from morning to afternoon temps.
 
<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by D Arita:
Yes...the ambient temp rose about 10 to 15 degrees. How then, would I be able to keep temps down during transitions from morning to afternoon temps. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

That is just one factor, the larger point being that several things effect the way the machine and your cooker work together, ambient temp being just one very minor one.

But, the simplest answers to your qustion are
1) Open the lid as infrequently as possible.
2) Leave the lid off as short as possible.
3) Make sure the blower is off when you do take the lid off, and for some time after you put it back on if possible.
4)Remember that a variance of several degrees for a short period of time during the duration of a long cook is not going to have a impact on the cooking.
 
<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by Gerd Hilkemeyer:
<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by Amir:
That usually means the damper is staying open on the blower. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

I sort of disagree, here at least.

At 8:30, the lid was opened, disrupting an extremely controlled environment that had spent 2 hours regulating itself. That is the last time the fan came on for hours. Upon lid replacement, the now stoked fire did what fires do, generating heat from the new fuel that was now ignited because of more O.

Nothing went crazy, temperature did not continue out of control, it simply rose from 230 to 240, and then rose from 240 to less than 250 for a period of 5 minutes. I would hardly call this a spike, but our definitions and expectations are clearly different. I would call it a residual response to the introduction of Oxygen and consumption of fuel.

Hypothetically, if the lid had NOT been opened, based on the prior graph, we would assume it would have held closer to 230 for quite some time right? I see no reason to think a stuck blower door was the cause. For that to be the case, the blower door would have had to have gotten stuck at the same time the lid was taken off. Not the most likely root cause in my estimation.

Here is the larger point: The stoker did what it is supposed to do at all times. You changed it's environment - a lot - when you opened the lid. It looks like it thought it was done ramping heat, and then you told it the temperature dropped and also introduced a bunch of O. As a result, the smoker warmed up 'a little bit' and for 'a short while'. IE, 10 to 15 degres for 2 hours.

By the way, after a couple hours, that meat is no longer a heat sink like it was earlier. Did the outside sun start helping to warm the cooker later in the morning? Was the ambient temperature different by 10 degrees?

After several years using the stoker, here is one certainty I have learned for myself: The more you fiddle with things, particularly opening the lid, the less stable the temperature is going to be. The second thing I have leaarned is, it is still far more stable than my electric oven. The third thoing I have learned is, the variability of the food I am cooking is much larger than the variability of a 4% temperature swing. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

And this is why we just call him "G-Money"!
 
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