Hello From Ohio

[OSUrules]

New to the pitmaster but have been a huge fan of the site for a couple of years. Thank you for all that you have taught me Amazingribs!

I'm new to smoking on charcoal and would love any advice on WSM 18.5. I'm looking at building a PID for the unit in the future if anyone has advise on that let me know.

[LA Pork Butt]

Welcome to the Pit!

[Jon Solberg]

Welcome aboard OSR!

[Huskee]

Welcome to The Pit OSUrules! Glad to have you here. There are many WSM users here to help. Building a PID unit for it? That's quite a cool project- you must have some nice electrical engineering skills. Is this going to be better than the controllers currently available, or just something you enjoy doing so you want to do it yourself instead of buy one?

Since this is your first post, please check out our homework assignment post for new members, it contains a few how-tos and please-dos.

Also, it's very important that you add the domain AmazingRibs.com to your email safe list in case you are ever drawn as our monthly Gold Medal Giveaway winner!

Hope to hear & see more from you!

[David Parrish]

Welcome OSUrules! We're glad you're here, even if you don't have good taste in college football

[OSUrules]

Well It's hard not to be an OSU fan from ohio.

I have some electrical skills but far from someone that can do it 100% on my own. I'm plan on building PID only because I can get most of the parts from my father that has a lot of left over parts from his heating and cooling days. The Auber units are great but spending 200-400 bucks on something that I can do for 100 is hard for me. My plan is do to a pid controller with fan with ramp up speed, damper control, off for correct temperature. It's more than I need but I keep adding just because of the controller I have.

I just want to be able to set up the unit before I go to bed and keep a temperature close so I don't have to loose sleep. :-)

[David Parrish]

OSUrules the Party Q is an excellent basic controller and costs $150. Use that as the upper limit of what you want to spend

[OSUrules]

I'll look into it. Thank you for the info!

[fuzzydaddy]

Welcome to the Pit OSUrules!

[DWCowles]

Welcome OSUrules

[smokinfatties]

welcome OSUrules ! always happy to share any insight on WSM. I too have an 18.5. I also recommend buying the better (thicker) door from Cajun Bandit or you could take a stab at making one yourself if you're into that kind of stuff. The temp control module makes a world of difference! I bought the stoker unit and it works excellent, but it is the same price as the WSM!

Have you had any specific issues with the WSM so far? If youre having trouble with temp control, take a look at the WSM charcoal set up article that is posted on the AR website. for long haul cooks i use the "soo's donut" and for shorter cooks i use the "fuse" method he describes. the fuse method always worked well when my temps heated up too much, and it also made it easy to salvage any unused charcoal at the end of the "fuse"

Also, I don't put water in the water pan, i just leave it empty and cover in foil. Some have said that they put sand in there to help regulate temperatures better, others use the water pan. like you will find, there are a million answers to every question! this site is great to get more info not only on the science but the technique that everyone else uses.

Cheers!

Paul

[3DJ]

Ahhh another Buckeye! OSUrules I took a beating around here leading to the NC game last year lol. Then it got quiet ;-) GO BUCKS!
I don't have a 18.5", I have the 22.5" and love it. You would do well to review Harry Soo's video from a little over a year ago.

[OSUrules]

smokin, My biggest issue is temp on log cooks for brisket or pork. I seem to have to adjust 20-30 times a cook and load up to 2 bags of kb. The last round I started out for pulled pork I loaded up full donut with full load of started coals. by 6 hours in I had to load more, 9 hours in load more, 12 hours load, 14 hours loaded and when it was done I had loaded in 2 bags. I don't know if my ash build up is causing issues as it seems to be holding with the coals and not dropping down. My full donut was almost gone in first 6 hours. The temp outside was 40 with wind. I had the vents at 1/3 and at the end full open to keep it even close to 225.

3dj, GO BUCKS.

[BigBear]

Welcome to The Pit OSUrules . We're glad you're here! Good luck with the PID project.