Chamber temp vs set / measured temp.

I also have a 700$ A5 Wagyu brisket that me and 10 of my buddies all threw in on, and I plan on cooking for an "end of summer" party after I start nailing regular briskets with my eyes closed. For cooks like this, I wwant to reallllly be precise. I think for the A5, I'll probably rotate it every hour.

I like the bull internal probes but by no means trust them inherently. If you do other briskets without rotation that A5 wouldnt need it either. Just know that is going to play different than any other one you have done up to that point. Have other probes you completely trust and minimally have a great instant read.
 
Just a quick update to this thread. I thought I'd give it one more shot before I called RecTec support again, so I tried to smoke a small pork loin at 180 over the weekend. The smoker couldn't really hold 180 for any measurable amount of time, with lots of spikes of 30+ degrees with one almost 100 degree spike.

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I called RecTec and they said that the temp swings displayed on the their app aren't normal and they are replacing the controller board and the internal probe. I'll report back once I get it all swapped over and run it again.
 
I know we talked about this a little before, and also how water boils at different temps according to your proximity to sea level. However, has anyone recalibrated their meat probes from the ice water test to the Boiling water test? And if so, curious if you felt there was a difference in accuracy when cooking?... I'd think they should be sync'd at 32° or 212°.... But ????
 
Jeff's work was a fascinating read. I thought I'd bring this to the top and see if Jeff or anyone else has done more to understand what's going on inside our grills.

I ran some wings over the weekend and while I didn't have a Fireboard, I put the A and B probes in the chamber of my Bull, one dead center and one on the right end, centered front to back. I saw some big swings from well below the set temp and "actual temp". In one or two cases, it seemed to be close to 100F different than the set/actual temp readings.
 
I almost feel too embarrassed to share this given how simplistic my approach has been compared to the exhaustive data you folks collected and shared but I'm not capturing spikes, yet (though I also haven't used the Bull in the summer heat).

During my first smoke I simply monitored the pit temp at two points, approximately 7" from left and right edges, compared that data to the Bull's reported actual temp, which led to an OFS adjustment of -10%. Here are a few pit temp logs, which I believe can be interpreted without annotation:

On this one I ran at 275f, then lowered to 250, then raised to 280. Outdoor temp 36-52f:


I ran this cook at 250f, then 275, then 280. This was a corned beef brisket, which I spritzed several times. Outdoor temp 46-57f:


This one was just smoked salt, running on Xtreme. I opened the lid some to look at the color (but I cannot tell you when it was opened). Outdoor temp 45-52f


This does not speak to temperature variance across the pit but it does indicate that at this present time I'm not experiencing spikes. I'm using the Bull under a walkout deck with a wind shield on all sides. No gasket on door. Graphs from Fireboard.

Thx
 
I figured I'd update this thread since it's been a while, and it's been kicked back to the top of the forum. While the grill has some temperature variation on the grilling surface, I totally expect that to be normal and I just account for the hot and cold areas when cooking. The temperature spikes were the main issue and I'm happy to say those have been fixed. RecTec sent me a replacement control board at the end of the summer after I sent them the pics of the temp swings in the grill. After I swapped the board, I ran a few long sessions to see if there were any changes. It looks like the board was the problem because the huge temperature spikes are no longer an issue, and the swings I do see in temperature are much smaller and the recovery time is much quicker since the spikes are smaller. I did test in summer as well as fall temps and all seems good at the moment.

I will say that the folks at RecTec were really helpful and once we nailed down the board as the issue, they were really quick to send out a replacement. Support was always easy to contact and really quick to call me back if I had to leave a message.

I'll post more data if I run into any weird issues but for now I'll just leave a pic of a brisked I smoked back in November. I probably trimmed too much fat off the bottom, but it was good none the less.

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