Virgin smoker, attempting first Picnic

Well......I did not actually 'calibrate' it per say. When it read 210, I went and put it in my indoor oven, set it for 240, checked it out 10 minutes later and it was right on 240.......

When I probe it later with the Igrill, I'm going to hang one probe at the bottom and another on the same level as the shoulder, and see what things look like.

I kept the water bowl out.

More to come later.......

Thanks for the sauce link, Timber......

It's been 8 hours now. The meat was about 169 so I took it out to wrap in foil. The MES probe is about 4 degrees less than the igrill one one.

Also my Amazing smoker put itself out after about an hour. I supplemented some wood chips in the MES chip tray. Funny thing is, even though the wood ran out, it is still smoking! Maybe from the pan drippings? When I took ithe pan out it probably only had a half ounce or so of drippings, and some was dried out on the pan.

Yep, I can confirm I was getting a lot of smoke from the drippings tray. Probably because I took the empty water bowl out to try to get temps higher in the box.....hope I havnt screwed this pork up.....

Sorry for the late reply. I did not realize the proper edicate to finish up the thread to describe the outcome.......

I did foil around 170 by putting the Picnic in the drippings tray and foiling it all over..it cooked another few hours and I took it out at 200 degrees, wrapped it in a bath towel, and stuck it in a styrofoam cooler. Left it there fo 2 hours.

When I unwrapped it, it was still very warm.......It pulled apart so easy with the bone and the large fat cap just fell off of the picnic. I was very pleased with the tenderness and the moistness of the PP. I couldn't have hoped fo it to be any better.

Now, here are some things I learned from this cook with my MES.

From my testing with an over thermometer, it seems that the thermostat for the MES is at the bottom of the unit where the heating element was. I had the temp set 240 degrees. I had the empty water bown on top of the element/chip tray, then the AMPS to the left of that. Then I had a large foil pan on the second rack to use as a drip pan. Then, the Picnic on the top rack. It seems to me that with so much 'coverage' between the element and the picnic, and the fact that the thermostat is in the bottom of the unit with the element, that the temps that reach the top rack are probable 10 - 15% lower than the setting of the unit. With my oven thermometer on the bottom of the unit, it recorded a temp of 240, same as the MES setting. But when I moved the oven thermometer to the top rack, it only show a temp of about 210! I removed the empty water tray, and rolled up the ends of the dripping tray to take up less space on the rack, and the temp on the Picnic tray went to about 220.

Now, this is not an exact science, and I would love to know if other MES owners have measured their temps with stuff in their smokers......

Anyway, even though I cooked at around 220, my 8 lb. Picnic took around 12 hours to get to 200, and it turned our great. Thanks for everyone's help on my first cook!

Mike