PSA: spent 6 hours and 3 cooks over 8 weeks chasing a 25 degree temp gap across my grate, turned out to be one thing | BBQ Pitmasters - Babble Community
PSA: spent 6 hours and 3 cooks over 8 weeks chasing a 25 degree temp gap across my grate, turned out to be one thing
My left thermo was reading 25 degrees hotter than the right at a comp in Wichita, and I kept adjusting the vents, the charcoal pile, everything except rotating my meat. It was just the hot spot from my firebox inlet the whole time, and a simple grate rotation fixed it in 4 cooks. Anybody else get tunnel vision on airflow when the answer was staring at you from the other side of the pit?
Been there for sure. On my offset the stack side always runs hot and I used to chase it with the intake damper for hours. Swapped to rotating the meat every 45 min and flipping the grate end to end halfway through, fixed it right up. Hot spot on the firebox side is just physics, you can fight it with airflow all day and lose. Learned that one the hard way at a backyard cook when my brisket flat came out lopsided. Now I mark the grate with a piece of tape so I know which end is which.