New MES 40

wiremonkey said:

 
I just got a new MES 40 for Christmas. I am currently in the middle of smoking a pork roast. This seems to be a great smoker, how cool is the remote control. My meat probe seems to be reading about 20 deg. high but I think I must not have it in fully. Just using my old temp gauge to keep from having the smoker open too much. I am checking it about every 30 min. Does this sound good or am I opening the smoker too often. Thanks for any tips. 

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I would never trust the MES temps--Meat or smoker.

I only trust my Maverick ET-732, because I can test it in boiling water any time I want.

Kinda hard to dip the whole smoker in boiling water. 

Bear

You may find that both the meat and chamber temps are probably off on the mes. Many folks have found the mes to be off as much as 30 degrees. A maverick et732 is a great add on... especially for a masterbuilt electric.

The exhaust vent is pretty small on the new mes models. I would leave it wide open all the time. And pull out the chip loader a few inches. You need to keep air moving thru the chamber. You have a 1200 watt element so don't worry about losing heat. And, yeah, you made the common mistake of oversmoking. Just thin blue / gray smoke should be coming out. Not thick clouds of white stuff. Lesson learned and try again. Best of luck on the next one. Easy on the smoke for chicken.

geerock said:

The exhaust vent is pretty small on the new mes models. I would leave it wide open all the time. And pull out the chip loader a few inches. You need to keep air moving thru the chamber. You have a 1200 watt element so don't worry about losing heat. And, yeah, you made the common mistake of oversmoking. Just thin blue / gray smoke should be coming out. Not thick clouds of white stuff. Lesson learned and try again. Best of luck on the next one. Easy on the smoke for chicken.

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What Geerock said.

Also, don't worry about smoking for many hours. As long as it's light smoke, you'll be fine.

However a short time of heavy smoke will give you the cigar-like creosote flavor.

Many hours of light smoke------Good.

Any amount of Heavy smoke-------Bad.

You might want to look into getting an AMNPS-----Up to 12 hours of perfect, continuous, consistent smoke without touching it.

Bear

wiremonkey said:

 
I just got a new MES 40 for Christmas. I am currently in the middle of smoking a pork roast. This seems to be a great smoker, how cool is the remote control. My meat probe seems to be reading about 20 deg. high but I think I must not have it in fully. Just using my old temp gauge to keep from having the smoker open too much. I am checking it about every 30 min. Does this sound good or am I opening the smoker too often. Thanks for any tips. 

Click to expand...

Congratulations and welcome to the wonderful world of "more help with your MES than you know what to do with". 

I'm going to agree with most posts and suggest you get another temperature measurement device. The Maverick dual probe is a good choice unless you're a gear head like me. I gave my son (who has my old MES-30) the ET-372 for Christmas. I use the iGrill so I can track the temperature profile (chamber and meat or two meats) during the smoke.

I'm documenting my issues with my MES-40 here: http://www.smokingmeatforums.com/t/151864/mes-40-model-20070512-temperature-problems Due to work and health issues I haven't smoked recently. I'll be doing a pork butt this week and adding the Q-view to the temperature problem thread.

And I've never used water pans in my smokes, so if you have the same model I do, I second the motion to get an AMNPS from Todd. You can get the Maverick from him too. Last time I checked his price was the same as Amazon, so I bought from him. I believe in supporting those who support smoking!