Looking for advice on new smoker and thermal processing.

[processhead]

armyguy I agree with Dave in AZ comments and would add that in my experience, having greater heating capacity normally can help push you through temperature plateaus or “stalls”.
With the added heating capacity you also need adequate temperature controls that will hold temperature below that which fat rendering can happen.
Stalls can happen anytime there is too much product loaded in a smoker without enough thermal capacity.
Cool/ cold ambient temperatures can make it even worse.

[Jamieson22]

Curious what smoker temp were you running when you went to bed?

[Jonathon]

armyguy If you can afford it a smoker with humidity controls will be a huge benefit to you, it makes an enormous difference. How fatty was the brisket you added? If you added a lot of beef fat then I can see that causing some issues with your cooking time and the finished product.

[armyguy]

processhead

Yeah the PK100 stays rock solid at the set temp once it gets there. I do know it was pretty cold outside that night(in the low 30’s). Smoker was pretty full. I think I had most of the racks full except one. I thought I had recorded the cool with my FireBoard but I can’t see the cook so not sure what happened there. Set temp was 180° to finish with 3 auto sponges in after the first hour of drying.

[armyguy]

Jamieson22

Bumped it to 180 right before I went to sleep.

[armyguy]

Jonathon

I believe just normal. I removed a lot of the fat cap and silver skin so I trimmed it up pretty good. If I saw bits of good fat I threw them in.

The smoker I ordered(Nu-Vu Smoke13) has solid state controls and is supposed to hold temps really accurately from 50°-350°. The only thing I don’t like is that all of the controls, including the temp range are knobs. The temp range on the knob are in 25° increments. The way the humidity works is that it has an adjustment from 1-10. It changes how many times per minute the water sprays on the heater and steams. It also has a big fan on top that circulates the air/smoke throughout the smoker which should help a lot with keeping even temps.

I may have to change out the temp and humidity dials to PID if I don’t get as accurate as I’d like with the knob adjustments.

[cdavis]

armyguy congrats on what sounds like a great smoker. Enjoy and keep us posted.

[processhead]

armyguy
That sounds like a nice unit with some useful features.
After you get it, put a couple of pans of water in it to simulate some meat or sausage. Then do some test runs to see how close the cabinet temperature holds to the set temperature.
This will give a good idea of the level of precision of the controls. Same with the humidity.

[bocephus]

armyguy when you get your new smoker going, give us a review.

[armyguy]

Will do guys! I have a feeling I may end up switching out the temp controller and maybe even the humidity controller for digital controls down the road. The oven style knob controller with temp markings I’m not a huge fan of, but I’ll try and see how accurate it is and maybe make my own marks during trials for the temps I’ll usually use. It’s supposed to ship March 17th which is almost 3 months after ordering. Need to figure out where I’m going to put it and get the 240v electrical ran soon, along with a 1/4” water line.