CDN Smoker
New member
Wait till the wireless comes out and we all can post our cook temp trends.
thanks for the great information. I was thinking about using a gas over thermostat for my 6ft smoker but wasn;t sure til reading your post. I'm also wanting to make a 6ft burner out of pipe, you got any suggestions? Thanks, FarrisI work with ovens everyday. It is part of my job and what I have been trained for. So I have a bit of knowledge on this subject.
Most of your ovens around today use on/off thermostats and rely on "average" temps. If you take the highest and lowest swing in temp then add those two numbers together and divide by two that will give you your "average" temp. If you were to sit and watch a fluke reading the temp changes in your oven you would think there is something wrong. But this is normal and how they work. I have customers who will put a oven thermometer in there and then complain it is not accurate.
The older ovens with a constant pilot used a modulating thermostat like I have in my gas smoker. These ovens can keep a constant temp. The capillary tube is filled with fluid that expands when heated. As the oven gets closer to your set temperature the modulating thermostat will continue to reduce the size of the flame until it reaches the set temp. These thermostats are also used in many commercial ovens for restaurants because they offer very even temps and consistent cooking results.
When electronic ignition came into play and there were no longer standing pilots the modulating thermostats went bye-bye.
Electric ovens also have swings because of the slow cooling and heating of the electric element. Electric ovens that have a PID controller can keep temps with 1 degree because the thermostat is "smart" and knows how fast the element can heat the cabinet and will throttle power to the element to keep a constant temp. However those are usually specialized ovens(I have a PID on my Bradley) in manufacturing where very accurate temps are critical.
And it is very important to pre-heat newer ovens...
I had a customer that complained her new oven needs to be calibrated because she has burned several trays of brownies. I asked her did she wait until the oven was pre-heated before putting the brownies into the oven and she said yes. So I placed the thermocouple from the fluke meter on the rack and started the oven. After 12 minutes the oven ramped up to 485F and then to my surprise the oven controller beeped indicating the oven was pre-heated. The digital display on the oven showed it was at 350F but that was not the true temp. It took another 15 minutes for the oven to finally level off to reach an average of 349F. So the lady was placing a tray of brownies in a 485F oven and that explained why her brownies were burned. It was not out of calibration just the way the oven operated.
So the old saying "know your pit" can also apply to your home oven.
I'm not BP, and can't speak to the Memphis and MAK controllers, but the Yoder controller calculates and displays a running average of the temp it reads on the pit probe. Your ET732 pit probe will likely display a different temp that the grill's controller for that reason. There's a good reason on the software side to do that. That's what little I know on the subject, and that's plenty little indeed! LOL