Temperature Control nightmares

[C6Bill]

I get my pit probe in place while my temp is coming up. When it gets around 175 I’ll turn the controller on and close my bottom vent, almost every time lol Then as Tony said get the top vent just off the seat and set your controller temp. Then after my temp is steady I watch to see how hard the fan I s working, if it is running too hard I’ll open the top vent just a little more. Here is a screenshot of a brisket session you can see how stable the  Fireboard is capable of running. Building a good pile of lump plays a big part in it too. 
 

Edited September 30, 2023 by C6Bill

[Cheesehead_Griller]

On 9/30/2023 at 4:36 PM, C6Bill said:

I get my pit probe in place while my temp is coming up. When it gets around 175 I’ll turn the controller on and close my bottom vent, almost every time lol Then as Tony said get the top vent just off the seat and set your controller temp. Then after my temp is steady I watch to see how hard the fan I s working, if it is running too hard I’ll open the top vent just a little more. Here is a screenshot of a brisket session you can see how stable the  Fireboard is capable of running. Building a good pile of lump plays a big part in it too. 
 

Just as stated above, you can see how consistent the Firebird keeps my KK as well. Notice the green bars on the bottom represent when the fan is running and at what percentage. I setup the KK before I went to bed. I woke up and noticed the fan was running quite a bit. I opened the top vent a to 1/4 turn from 1/8 open. You can see the fan barely ran after that. 

[johnnymnemonic]

I had the same issue initially in my kk42 @Mcdddy.  The worst time was when I was cooking 4 pork butts and I kept the KK open to wrap all 4.  To make this as good as it can be (and I feel now I control temps really well) is modifying my procedure.  now when cooking multiple pork butts I:
 

• go ahead and rip off the piece of foil or butcher paper on my side table
• open the grill, grab a pork butt, and put it on the butcher paper
• immediately close the lid
• finish wrapping the butt.
• Put down another piece of paper/foil
• open lid, put the wrapped piece back on, grab another one and put it on the paper
• immediately close the lid
• repeat

In other words if you keep the lid open as short of a duration as you can, it'll be much better.  Leave it open the whole time you are wrapping and your temp may spike +100 degrees and be difficult to bring back down (at least this is my experience).

Like other folks posting, I don't mess with my cooks much at all.
Billows goes on from the beginning.  Before putting food on at 225 I make sure the grill has been fully heat soaked.  With the KK42 that might be 90 minutes.  Once I put something like pork butts on I don't even open the grill for at least 6-8 hours (or more!  - with a pork butt sometimes I don't even wrap until resting!)

But when I wrap I follow the above procedure and it definitely minimizes the temperature jump.  I still sometimes see my KK go up from something like 225 to 250 after wrapping but to me that's not much.  Also sometimes the foil produces more convection so it can read a tad higher without having anything 'wrong' or 'different'.   If you're wrapped and you're probing the meat, then to me 25 degrees is no biggie either way.

The KK keeps so much moisture in, one thing to try is just not wrapping, especially if you're consuming immediately.  I vac seal mass quantities of pork and when I am doing big cooks I wrap just b/c it creates a little more consistency (and the bark isn't as good when it's not fresh).

Edited October 12, 2023 by johnnymnemonic