Smoking Problems

[Ok_Longhorn]

Hornian's ribs looked good and I've been wanting to try smoking my own for awhile so I thought I'd give it a shot. I bought a small one from Academy with an off-set firebox. It's a New Braunfels/Char-Broil Hondo Junior Smoker. Also bought a digital temp. probe as most say the dial ones are horrible inaccurate.

My problem is I'm burning my ribs. The top are burnt black while the meat is still decent, just not a good overall meal. I posted a question Hornian's thread and he questioned the size of my smoker. So to not threadjack, I thought I'd continue the conversation here.

Just, no jokes about the size of my smoker...

Anyway, I did put a baffle to direct the heat down under the meat and the probe is right under the meat. Last time I had it sitting on the grill right next to the meat with the same results. The dial temp gauge on the grill though read 100 degrees more than the probe and it's up high so maybe I should elevate it. I'll know more when I hit the various points with the laser gauge I'm sure.

Below is my setup. I'd post picture of the ribs but, well, it's just too painful..

 

[Brisketexan]

Just sounds to me like you're running too hot.

One easy way to get a feel for things -- when your probe reads 225 or whatever you're looking for, and the thermometer on the actual smoker reads 100 degrees higher, open the smoke chamber and stick your hand in the respective places RIGHT AWAY. If it feels hotter than hell, then it probably IS too hot, no matter what your thermometers say.

I will say this -- my thermometer is the regular old lid-mounted dial readout (it DOES have the metal probe that goes down into the smoke chamber some). And I have learned that it is reasonably reliable for most of the chamber (with the same warning about meat that's closer to the fire box -- that can get hotter and charred if my fire gets going a bit big).

Maybe your lid thermometer is a better gauge of the actual cooking temp of your meat. It's trial and error, but there's no beating the natural thermometer at the end of your arm -- if you stick that in the chamber while it's still hot, and it's hotter than 225 or what have you, then trust that feeling. If it is too hot for your hand, it's too hot for your ribs, brisket, etc.

 

[wannawinit]

If you keep smoke stack wide open and the fire vent wide open....those smokers will creat really good draw...so good in fact that a good fire will actually be sorta pulled up into smoking chamber. Keep wood further away from opening between weeod chamber and smoking chamber and close up vents before meat goes on. You may already be doing all of this, byt just a few thoughts off the top of my head.

 

[Ok_Longhorn]

Did some quick tests tonight and found out that the digital gauge wasn't functioning right. It reads really low when touching metal. I had the base wrapped in tin foil so I set it in there on a piece of wood and it did much better... The laser picture I have below shows it 20 degrees off but I was measuring the wood and it cools down faster than I can take the picture.

The dial gauge was still reading 50 degrees more though at least. So I took it out and put it in the oven set to 200 degrees. To my surprise, after awhile in a 200 degree oven, it read..... 200 degrees.. So they're both right???

My guess was that the dial gauge is reading the temp at the top, the digital was reading the temp at the grill level. So I decided to split the two. I'm keeping the dial under 250 and the digital around 200. We'll see how this goes..

Below links to pictures of the setup.

Probe
Laser & Digital
Heat Shield

Hopefully tommorrow I'll be able to post pictures of non-blacken ribs. Thanks for everyone's help.

 

[Ok_Longhorn]

Ok, using the laser temp gauge I found that the grill, where the digital probe was, is about 50 degrees cooler than the dial gauge reads. 100 degrees cooler if the probe is touching the grill (I ended up with mine on a piece of wood).

Cooking it with the dial at 250 and the digital at 200 worked great. I'm thinking it would have been even better if I'd dropped it 30 more degrees so next time I'm just going to go by the dial gauge. I figure that is what most of you are using when you talk temps so..

Thanks for all you help on this. It's been an education.

Now on to brisket..