Temp Issue - New User

gavin84770

New member
Messages
2
Grill(s) owned
  1. Bull
Hey All,
Reluctant poster here. Been smoking for several years, have had several Traeger brands. Switched over to Rec Tec after a lot of research and a couple unfortunate experiences with Traeger. Another story for another day.

So my Bull shows up. I love it. I am a weekend smoker. I smoke brisket (packers, 16-18 lb) chicken, salmon, wings, prime rib, family type stuff. My brisket is tried and true and never had an issue....until now. I think I have a temperature issue but cannot figure it out and am hopeful one of you who is a lot smarter than me can help. I view customer service as a last resort....

My first smoke on the Bull was a batch of wings. Turned out perfect. I do not do my wings by internal temp, I do them by time and look. Next up was a 15 lb brisket. Immediately I thought something was off on my probes. For fun I put one in the point and one in the flat and they were about 40 degrees off from each other. Same brisket, took forever...way longer than the Traeger, but on the same temp. The brisket took a total of 18 hours and that was after jacking the temperature just to get some movement. It came out dry in the flat and just right on the point.

So I decided to do two prime ribs to check out the probe temp. Same thing. The one on the right side of the grill was consistently 30-35 degrees cooler than the one on the left. So I began to search the internet and found the forum. I found a thread about temp calibration and tried that this weekend. Put a brick in the smoker and two probes and set it to 350. Neither probe ever got to 350 after an hour so I did the calibration on the unit and got everything set to 350 degrees and let it run for a bit.

I put a 13 lb brisket on last night at 10 pm. Probe in the flat and probe in the point. Set it to 200 to smoke all night and let it go. Woke up this morning and the probe in the point read 159 and the probe in the flat read 127. I normally take the brisket off at 160 and wrap in pink paper and then put the temp at 225 and smoke until I hit 200-205. So I waited until the point probe read 170 and pulled it and wrapped it. It smoked at 225 for another 6 hours to try to reach 200. I was worried about it drying out again so I pulled it at 198. At this point it had been on the smoker for over 16 hours. I kept it wrapped, put a towel around it, and stuck it in the cooler.

Came back two hours later and the darn thing was bloody throughout. The point was inedible it was so raw and the flat was chewy like roast beef. Worst brisket I have ever done. I have a temperature problem. 16 hours, 10 hours at 200 and 6 hours at 225 should not produce a raw brisket. In addition, I am very concerned about the discrepancy in my probes. The prime rib experiment should not happen. I never had a variance in the same type of meat, same smoker, of more than a couple of degrees. Any of you out there have any thoughts as to what my problem is? Many thanks in advance. I love to smoke. My wings and brisket are known throughout the circle of friends. I have been asked to cook for most family and friends gatherings and this has me rattled. Would love to figure it out.....
 
Have you also calibrated to pit temp probe?..sounds like it's running way cooler.
Meat probes are in degrees...but pit probe is in %percentage.
 
Hello Buckeye Smoker, no I have not. I only did the probe temp calibration. Is the pit calibration the one where the factory setting is at 6.5%? Do I want to go higher or lower percent wise?
 
I believe most here sync the meat probes to Ice water or boiling water (you know those temps*)
And then you do the procedure in the middle of grill to calibrate the pit probe..... So if you know your meat probes at reading say 225° you'd adjust your pit probe by percentage to get it to match . So if it read pit probe at 200° you adjust it up (12% basically) to make it 224..don't remember the increments . You get the idea.
 
The 6.5 is the minimum feed rate. there will be another screen under the gear that. it is an offset calibration. You will need a dependable ambient probe (not the ones that came with the grill)

Check this video out.

I had an issue with this too and had to set my offset a bit off from factory.
 
I don't know if this is the right spot to ask this question but here goes. I am wondering if anyone has come across a grate clip that will work on RT 700 and its probes. I see all kinds on Amazon but I have no idea which might work with the probe on the RT 700. Any help would be appreciated. I am trying to check pit temps in various locations on my Bull.
 
I had the exact same problem. Briskets were taking 20+ hours to cook and were coming out with really dry flats. Grill was running 10-15 degrees cooler than the pit probe said. Doesn’t seem like a lot but over 12-15 hours, it makes a big difference. Went into the offset settings and it was set to +1%, changed to -3% and it made a huge difference and my briskets are cooking as they should.
 
I had the exact same problem. Briskets were taking 20+ hours to cook and were coming out with really dry flats. Grill was running 10-15 degrees cooler than the pit probe said. Doesn’t seem like a lot but over 12-15 hours, it makes a big difference. Went into the offset settings and it was set to +1%, changed to -3% and it made a huge difference and my briskets are cooking as they should.
I have a 680 and did a brisket for superbowl.. 235 until 170 degrees and put in a foil pan with beef broth until 202.. came out awesome! I had issues with my grill taking for ever to get to temp, or get above 300... talked to rec tec last week and got the parts shipped and installed Saturday. Their customer service is great!

Chris
 
I have a 680 and did a brisket for superbowl.. 235 until 170 degrees and put in a foil pan with beef broth until 202.. came out awesome! I had issues with my grill taking for ever to get to temp, or get above 300... talked to rec tec last week and got the parts shipped and installed Saturday. Their customer service is great!

Chris
Btw, those probes are crap! They replaced mine, and now they're pretty close. But I use the maverick wireless and maverick meat probe mostly.

Chris
 

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