Smoker Vents during thermostatic control

[Michael Brinton]

Remember the nature of wsm and kettle smoking is basically a choked fire. It's the trade off for the convenience vs a stick burner. See Aaron Franklin's PBS show for a real good explanation of this. Stick burners larger pits have a much more continuous flow of air. A lot of this is size. With little bullet smokers and kettles the air exchange is always going to be minimal. Without the auber vents will need to be cracked tiny adjustments make a huge difference. The coals basically draw the air they need. Your right, the auber adds too much air. When you set it up ideally the fan will run in tiny short blasts just enough to stoke it a little. With top vents open you will loose more in temperature than you will gain in air flow.

[lord2464]

I agree with you. On my WSM what appears to be happening with all the vents closed and the top vent just cracked is that the unit is retaining heat very well, but there is no oxygen feeding the the coals so the "fire" is dying. When the Auber turns on it is literally blowing the hot air out - but the coals are not burning at a sufficient level to replenish the heat - as such the temp goes down until the coal gets stoked enough by the fresh air to strart moving back up. Note that my WSM has a pretty good gasket package installed. I know that my WSM was very "leaky" before the gaskets - I wonder if on some Auber set ups that are working very well if there is enough oxygen sneaking in the gaps to keep the coals burning a bit more than on my setup? That might explain why I am having a little more luck with the top vent wide open and one of the bottom vents opened about 1/4 of the way. Coals are getting just enough air to stay lit and Auber is adding a little extra gust of air when needed. Just my hypothesis...

[lord2464]

Well, I might be done with this guy. For whatever reason, on my ssystem, it does not work well at all. Every time it cycles on, my temps DROP - and not by a little. It then runs like crazy to get back up to temp which causes it to over shoot. I am trying to cook at 250. When fan comes on it drops all the way to 220, then it runs like crazy, turns off at 250, but temp keeps climbing to 270- 275,. I've tried every combo recomended in this thread... very sad, really want this to work good for me!

Whats really crazy is when its down in the 220's and still dropping - if I unplug the auber, the temps start to climb again. It's like the unit is doing the opposite. Still goes back to my point, I feel that there may be TOO MUCH airflow - blowing heat out faster than coals can replace.

[lord2464]

Sorry guys - I feel like I have completely hijacked this thread. Hopefully someone is finding it useful. Frustratin cook yesterday. The thing is, I can make the controller work on my system. I hooked it up to a switch and manually turned it on and off. The problem seems to be that there is not enough "rest time" as the unit cycles on and off - especially if the unit is trying to recover from a severe move off of the SV. I imagine it as blowing on the embers of a camp fire - when you blow you feed the fire but the heat comes when you stop blowing on the fire. This explains why when the fan was running yesterday, the temp was GOING down! When I turned off the blower the temp starts rocketing back up since the fire is now allowed to burn! Auto tune is not very helpful, what I'd like to do is figure out how to manually set the unit to insert longer breaks between cycles - this would replicate what I was doing manually that worked very effectively. Plan on calling auber tomorrow.

[Michael Brinton]

There's no hijacking threads in the pit. Feel free to post however much you want. Maybe the auto tune threw everything off? I never used it because it held temp close without it. I'd be interested to hear what they tell you. Like I said I only ever used mine with the sns/ kettle but it holds temperature basically perfect. As long as I have enough coals. The only time I had a problem was when I had done an all night cook for a party then tried to throw some chicken thighs on. The ash had built up so much the air wasn't reaching the coals. Other than that it always worked. I hope they can get things working for you, it is handy to be able to leave the auber in charge.

[lord2464]

So I spoke with Ken from Auber this morning. First, he is a WSM user himself which I found refreshing. He also told me that he has had similar problems. Here is what he said. 1) try starting with more lit coals then you might for a naturally aspirated pit. I generally start with about 2 lbs of lit coals (about 40 kingsford). I will up the coals at start to 3 lbs. Ken stated that Autotune hasn't been as effective on this combo (6.5 CFM with 18.5 WSM) as with other combos so he gave me a few modifications. First, He recommended setting P= 1.5 (default =1.2) and leaving I and D at factory (300 and 70 respectively). He also said changing the cycle time ("OT") to something hire like 30 seconds could allow for judgement of recovery after the fan turns off (default 15). He recommended all bottom vents closed. Top vent can be open all the way when unit is coming up to speed, but close to about 1/16 of an inch while maintaining.

Will try these tips out asap then get back to everyone

[Mr. Bones]

Good luck, let us know what ya' learn.
This has been an' interestin' discuss, even though I don't have an Auber, I have two 18.5 WSM's.

[Michael Brinton]

Sounds right. Like I posted a sns 225 calls for 12 coals I find 20+ gets the auber rolling. You always want more than you need when not using the fan. You bring the cooker a little bit over what you want the auber to hold. So with you plug the fan in it just occasionally puffs a little air in. If you don't have enough lit it will just struggle and keep running. It takes longer to start up than regular smoking because you have to allow time for the fire and smoke to die down and let the auber take over. Once it does as long as you've got enough unlit and water in the pans your set until it's done.
I think once you've got the amount of coals needed down and it works then you could try the auto tune (which I never did). In the test run on the main site it only improved it by a degree varied by two got it down to one.

[lord2464]

So, making these changes worked wonders for holding 250. I was very happy with the results. I even tried to up it to 275 which worked ok but became a struggle after a few hours. Still nothing like what was happening, but acceptable. I realize there are bigger blowers for high temp. I was just testing the systems limits. I'd like to thank Ken at Auber for his advice.