Which one is the BEST
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OK folks want a new toy looking at the BBQ GURU. Have been told the stoker is better
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Well Bob, here is my humble opinion. I run a partyQ from BBQ Guru. I don't believe that it makes my cooks any better. I feel its just a gadget. I think that any smoker thats set up right will run solid without added technology. Not sure what your looking to do and perhapes this opinion will be unpopular but...
Anyway. What do you hope to achieve with the stoker / controler ?
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I have a Party Q from BBQ Guru and really like the way it performs. I use it with my Smokenator and together they are a killer combo for temp control on my Weber 22.5" One Touch Silver. Much easier than adjusting the vents to get to 225. Not just a "gadjet" IMO. My brother has a Traeger and has determined that his Weber with the SN and the Party Q gets better results. TIFWIW. Good luck
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I have the dx2 and the cyber q from guru, both of them are amazing, pay close attention to the options you want like open lid detect is nice, the ramp is cool too i threw in a full shoulder with ramp mode on, went to work whick is an hour away did a full 8 to 5 day and came back to a done meal. I cant speak for stoker but meat head had some issues and the buyer guide says not recomended, i did email guru with some questions and they did get back to me promptly so i highly recomend bbq guru
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Administrator
- May 2014
- 18451
- Clare, Michigan area
-
Follow me on Instagram, huskeesbarbecue
Smokers / Grills- Yoder loaded Wichita offset smoker
- PBC
- Grilla Silverbac pellet grill
- Slow 'N Sear Deluxe Kamado (SnSK)
- Masterbuilt Gravity 560
- Masterbuilt Digital Charcoal Cabinet
- Weber 22" Original Kettle Premium (copper)
- Weber 26" Original Kettle Premium (light blue)
- Weber Jumbo Joe Gold (18.5")
- Weber Smokey Joe Silver (14.5")
- Brinkmann cabinet charcoal smoker (repurposed)
Thermometers- SnS 500 4-probe wireless
- (3) Maverick XR-50 4-probe Wireless Thermometers
- A few straggler Maverick ET-732s
- Maverick ET-735 Bluetooth (in box)
- Smoke X4 by ThermoWorks
- Thermapen MkII, orange & purple
- ThermoPop, yellow, plus a few more in a drawer for gifts
- ThermoWorks ChefAlarm (wife's)
- Morpilot 6-probe wireless
- ThermoWorks Infrared IRK2
- ThermoWorks fridge & freezer therms as well
Accessories- Instant Pot 6qt
- Anova Bluetooth SV
- Kitchen Aide mixer & meat grinder attachment
- Kindling Cracker King (XL)
- a couple BBQ Dragons
- Weber full & half chimneys, Char-Broil Half Time chimney
- Weber grill topper
- Slow 'N Sear Original, XL, and SnS Charcoal Basket (for Jumbo Joe)
- Drip 'N Griddle Pans, 22' Easy Spin Grate, and Elevated Cooking grate, by SnSGrills
- Pittsburgh Digital Moisture Meter
Beverages- Favorite summer beers: Leinenkugels Summer & Grapefruit Shandy, Hamm's, Michelob Ultra Pure Gold
- Fav other beers: Zombie Dust (an IPA by 3 Floyd's Brewing), Austin Bros IPA, DAB, Sam Adams regular, Third Shift amber or Coors Batch 19, Stella Artois
- Fav cheap beers: Pabst, High Life, Hamm's & Stroh's
- Most favorite beer: The one in your fridge
- Wine: Red- big, bold, tannic & peppery- Petite Sirah, Zinfandel, Cabernet Sauv, Sangiovese, Syrah, etc
- Whiskey: Buffalo Trace, E.H. Taylor, Blanton's, Old Forester 1870, Elijah Craig Toasted, Basil Hayden's. Neat please.
- Scotch: Current favorite- The Arran (anything by them), Glenmorangie 12yr Lasanta, sherry cask finished. The Balvenie Double Wood, also like Oban 18yr, and The Glenlivet Nadurra (Oloroso sherry cask finished) among others. Neat please.
About me
Real name: Aaron
Location: Farwell, Michigan- near Clare. (dead center of lower peninsula)
Occupation:- Healthcare- Licensed & Registered Respiratory Therapist (RRT) at MyMichigan Health, a University of Michigan Health System.
Papa Bob, we've got to get to work on that signature of yours. Do you know how to get into your settings to set it up? If not let me or PB know and we can set it up for you. The purpose of the signature is so we can all see what gear you have and give pointers from there. We want to see your smoker(s) Grill(s) and Thermometer(s), and your favorite beer or music might be cool to see too.
On that note, what do you want to use the GURU or Stoker on?
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I have often times considered it. But for me most of my cooks are during the day. And i run a UDS w/ the Big poppa kit. So far all my smoking the ambient temp has been around 100* so its not difficult to light 6 coals and let the thing go for 20 hours (even with sudden rain showers). I haven't had the need to monitor the temp. During the winter when it gets colder 16* outside i imagine i light 10 coals and let it go, and won't have any temp flux. So for me unless the cold weather proves to be an issue I just don't see the point yet. Now if i start doing overnight cooks where the temp outside can vary by 20* then i may consider it since I would expect a larger variance. Like others have said a good rig should keep temp steady without need of an extra hand.
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I have webber kettle and I run a bbq guru dx2 when I smoke only one chicken or 1 rack of ribs or to just monitoring the meat/pit temps with steaks. It does a really good job of keeping the pit at the temp you set it, unless of course you have too little fire to begin with or too much fire. I also use the dx2 with my PBC to monitor temps only. I don't use the fan on the PBC as there is no need.
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Charter Member
- Aug 2014
- 19
- Austin, TX
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Vision Grills Classic B Kamado Gril w/mods to limit leaks
Weber Genesis S-330
Custom Built Sous Vide Machine
Sansaire Sous Vide
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CyberQ Wifi mounted to Vision Kamado
iCelsius Dual BBQ Probes - soon to arrive
Epica ES432 Fast Pen Thermometer
Actron CP876 Infrared
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Beer: any double IPA, Reds, or unfiltered wheat for hotter days
Wine: Big Red Cabernets
Texan stuck in Socal
I can't comment on the Stoker, but my CyberQ Wifi arrived last week, and after some issues with setting up the WIFI for infrastructure mode I got it to work fantastically. On a side note, I'd rate my technical skills at a 10 in a 1 to 10 rating. I had to dig into the wifi chip version to determine what was wrong only to realize they are using a 802.11b wifi chip from.. 10 years ago? and my 2 year old router by default excluded certain exploits from the OLD b standard which prevented the CyberQ from finding my wifi signal. Once I disabled the "protected b wifi" the CyberQ could see my various wifi signals (I have multiple).
Anyway I planned on posting some of the temp readings from the 4 probes (1 pit, 3 meat) to show reactions from the grill from everything between filling the water pan to wrapping the meat. While BBQ Guru does not offer any phone apps of their own, or computer based programs, 3rd party developers have created great computer programs and phone apps to monitor and control the CyberQ Wifi (in case you wonder, the CyberQ 2 is different).
The web console is limited and slow whiles still fully functional. Lack of clear descriptions for each option is a little frustrating, you have to go to their site to look up definitions.
What I've tested-
Android:The Pit Pal - works great, decent graphing abilities with logging. I haven't loaded the CVS output file to graph the temps on my own, but that ability is great. Apparently it works with the Stoker too. 4 out of 5 stars
iOS: BBQRemoteV3 - barely works, lots of errors, you have to sign in, and give their servers access to your grill, no graphing functions that I found while it was working. 2 out of 5 stars
PC: CyberQ Wifi Windows Controller: better graphing, though somewhat limited in scaling by always showing the fan %. Works well, and able to control the grill and change temps, plus it can rename each probe so it's labeled correctly for each cook, and labels appear in the controller's built-in website as well. 4 out of 5 stars
From a grilling perspective: As a gift from my dad I was given a knockoff BGE that costs 60% less and had all kinds of quality problems, ranging from hardware to leaking air like crazy (I thought of all kinds of great analogies but none were PG13 or R) severely limiting temperature control. Once I added a ton of high temp caulk and the CyberQ, it cooks amazingly well. With all of the mods it's still 15-20% cheaper than a BGE or my preferred Primo Oval XL. On my longest cook it ran it just short of 20 hours straight with very little in temp variations; without food or an evaporating water pan it held +2/-1 degrees F for 6 hours! The only major variation I've seen is when the water pan ran out of water after 14 hours, and without the stabilizing effect of the water it had a problem keeping the temp to 225 because the vents were open just enough to maintain 240 without the blower fan running at all.
Again I have no experience with the Stoker, but the CyberQ Wifi is awesome. I've shared the link to its built-in website for my friends to see how the cook is coming along. In the future maybe I'll build my own website that pulls temps from the controller, incorporates temperature graphs of the grill and each meat probe, while preventing anyone from changing the temp settings.Last edited by Christobol; September 5, 2014, 10:12 AM. Reason: corrected spelling errors, and clarified verbage
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Administrator
- May 2014
- 18451
- Clare, Michigan area
-
Follow me on Instagram, huskeesbarbecue
Smokers / Grills- Yoder loaded Wichita offset smoker
- PBC
- Grilla Silverbac pellet grill
- Slow 'N Sear Deluxe Kamado (SnSK)
- Masterbuilt Gravity 560
- Masterbuilt Digital Charcoal Cabinet
- Weber 22" Original Kettle Premium (copper)
- Weber 26" Original Kettle Premium (light blue)
- Weber Jumbo Joe Gold (18.5")
- Weber Smokey Joe Silver (14.5")
- Brinkmann cabinet charcoal smoker (repurposed)
Thermometers- SnS 500 4-probe wireless
- (3) Maverick XR-50 4-probe Wireless Thermometers
- A few straggler Maverick ET-732s
- Maverick ET-735 Bluetooth (in box)
- Smoke X4 by ThermoWorks
- Thermapen MkII, orange & purple
- ThermoPop, yellow, plus a few more in a drawer for gifts
- ThermoWorks ChefAlarm (wife's)
- Morpilot 6-probe wireless
- ThermoWorks Infrared IRK2
- ThermoWorks fridge & freezer therms as well
Accessories- Instant Pot 6qt
- Anova Bluetooth SV
- Kitchen Aide mixer & meat grinder attachment
- Kindling Cracker King (XL)
- a couple BBQ Dragons
- Weber full & half chimneys, Char-Broil Half Time chimney
- Weber grill topper
- Slow 'N Sear Original, XL, and SnS Charcoal Basket (for Jumbo Joe)
- Drip 'N Griddle Pans, 22' Easy Spin Grate, and Elevated Cooking grate, by SnSGrills
- Pittsburgh Digital Moisture Meter
Beverages- Favorite summer beers: Leinenkugels Summer & Grapefruit Shandy, Hamm's, Michelob Ultra Pure Gold
- Fav other beers: Zombie Dust (an IPA by 3 Floyd's Brewing), Austin Bros IPA, DAB, Sam Adams regular, Third Shift amber or Coors Batch 19, Stella Artois
- Fav cheap beers: Pabst, High Life, Hamm's & Stroh's
- Most favorite beer: The one in your fridge
- Wine: Red- big, bold, tannic & peppery- Petite Sirah, Zinfandel, Cabernet Sauv, Sangiovese, Syrah, etc
- Whiskey: Buffalo Trace, E.H. Taylor, Blanton's, Old Forester 1870, Elijah Craig Toasted, Basil Hayden's. Neat please.
- Scotch: Current favorite- The Arran (anything by them), Glenmorangie 12yr Lasanta, sherry cask finished. The Balvenie Double Wood, also like Oban 18yr, and The Glenlivet Nadurra (Oloroso sherry cask finished) among others. Neat please.
About me
Real name: Aaron
Location: Farwell, Michigan- near Clare. (dead center of lower peninsula)
Occupation:- Healthcare- Licensed & Registered Respiratory Therapist (RRT) at MyMichigan Health, a University of Michigan Health System.
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