I haven't had that wide range of temperature. I'm always 10 degrees over or under my target.
What wood have you used so far?
Have you noticed any change with different ambient temperature?
I have noticed that oak works best when it comes to temp.
Sorry for the delay in responding. I've been too busy w work.
I appreciate your response.
Main fuel thus far has been oak. Ambient temp usually only affects the 'setting' on the dial. Hotter days obviously, I set the thermostat at a lower 'number' on the dial to get the desired cook box temp, but the temp range for the fan cycling is still pretty much in a 40 degree band. 20 degrees over and 20 degrees under. Part of the problem may be that the temperature probe (housed in the spring under the intake fan) was pretty sooted up. I had cleaned it a couple times before but have forgotten to recently.
Had a long talk with Bill and he suggests that maybe it's a function of the sensitivity of the thermometers I'm using or something along those lines.
As I understood him, he was saying that for the most part people are way too focused on precise temperatures and that the real focus should be on cooking at the correct temperature to make sure the food is done in the desired amount of time and learning to recognize properly cooked meat. Obviously he wasn't suggesting to just blast the thing like a furnace and race through everything, but his point was that he has never seen a definitive study where somebody could tell by taste whether a properly cooked brisket was cooked at 225 as opposed to 275. Kind of made sense to me.
He also had some pretty interesting (and seemingly sound) thoughts on water pans and trying to introduce additional moisture. Again, as I understood him, he was saying that with the convection fans cycling so frequently and the volume of air that moves through the rig as often as it does, there's no way to evaporate enough water quickly enough to appreciably influence the ambient humidity in the cook box. Again, makes sense to me. I think I'm done with water pans, or at least I'm going to try cooks without any.
Just some thoughts. The education and learning process continues....
Thanks.
