Is this a typical temperature chart for the WSM?

[Razor]

Ok, so I did my first long smoke. I smoked a 10lb pork shoulder. It was roughly a 15 hour cook. I used three probes in the meet and one ambient probe in the WSM. My question is looking at my chart from the iGrill I was all around 225 but was never "there" for any extended amount of time. The average temp was 233 and I did bump it up intentionally around 1:30 because the party was getting ready to start. Note, the rise at 12PM was by accident. I think the sun started to hit it just as I added some briquets. Oops!

My question, is this graph typical of what to expect with the WSM? I often see people say write you can set a WSM and forget it, which is pretty much what I did. And by judging the average temp I wasn't off from the magical 225. But there were some dips in between adding briquettes and knocking the ash off. Do I need to work a little harder at maintaining that temp?

By the way the meat was delicious. Thanks Meathead and crew for putting together such a great collection of BBQ and smoking resources.

[Fire Art]

I don’t know about graff butt that looks good enough to eat

[FireMan]

I’m in the same boat, I don’t cook with a graph. Great lookin piece of meat.

[Razor]

What can I say, I’m an engineer and in IT.

Thanks though. No leftovers whatsoever. Almost didn’t have to wash the crockpot I put it in.

[klflowers]

I have never graphed my temps on my wsm, but if I did, I think it would look like that. Last brisket cook was 14 hours, and it ran at an average of about 235. I had a couple of scares where at one point it was down around 200 cause that last beer put me to sleep for a minute, and I had a little trouble getting it back up to temp - it spiked up to around 325 on me. I think that was about 8 hours in. Didn't wrap it, just let it ride thru the stall. Once you get the temp set on the wsm, it will just run. By the way, that meat looks great.

[Razor]

This was the first time I ever experienced a true stall. I’m glad it happened at night when I was in bed.

[klflowers]

The first time the stall happened to me was before i was on this site on a butt. I panicked and ran the temp up to 350. Needless to say it was not a very successful cook.

[RonB]

First, 225* is not magic. It's just a temp that works well. For a pork butt, you could get away with 300* - maybe more. The important thing is to make sure it's probe tender when you pull it off the grill. And then at least an hour in a cambro - two or three being better, and longer will work too.

Those who use a PBC cook in the high 200* range all the time, and with spikes over 300*. Don't sweat small swings at all. Most here would be happy with a cook that graphed like yours.

[Razor]

Thanks. Gives me a lot of encouragement that I’m on the right path.

[ecowper]

If you put your iGrill in your oven, it would not have a steady line, either. Here’s a temp graph from cooking a pork butt ..... Fireboard was the monitor, no fan.

Notice the nice steady progress on the pork butt. That’s what really matters.

[CaptainMike]

How do you post the Fireboard graphs?

[ecowper]

I go into my Fireboard dashboard on the website and take a screenshot of it

[Razor]

True. Now that you mentioned it I use the iGrill on my oven a while back when I was baking ice skates for my son. I wanted to make sure I wasn’t going to melt them so I used the iGrill to monitor the oven and it was all over the place. I forgot about that.