Electric smoker - temp control?

[wing-it]

Hi everybody,
Our electric dome style smoker has a single heating element that weaves around the bottom of the grill on lava rock pebbles. A pretty standard design. I'd like to find a way to control the temperature to allow smoking for a longer period of time. Although we don'thave a temp guage when i use a cooking thermometer set on the grill the temp appears to be around 240-250. Does anyone have a method to control the temp or ideas that would alow me to cook a brisket , for example, for a longer period, say10-12 hours? I had some 12 hour smoked brisked last night at a professional smokehouse and it was so tender and not dried out.
Thanks, Bill

 

[daveomak]

Bill, morning....  Check the wattage of the element.... I use a 1500 watt incandescent dimmer switch to control the heat output of my electric element...  It allows to use the element as you would a gas burner... infinitely adjustable.... 

You also need good therms to know what it going on inside the cooker....   Dave

 

 

[wing-it]

Hi Dave

Thanks for the rheostat advice.  I'll give it a go.  The smoker was a fathers day gift a few years ago so won't be trading it in anytime soon.  Saw you were online and thought I'd chat but obviously haven't quite figured it out yet.  Thanks again for the advice.
 

 

[wing-it]

dave

forgot to ask if you have a temp gauge that you could suggest?

thanks

 

[Dutch]

wing-it, Alot of us like the Maverick ET-732 as it has dual probes-1 to monitor the cooking chamber temps and the other to monitor the internal temp of the meat.

 

[wjordan52]

x2 on both suggestions! I would be absolutely lost without my maverick; lets me smoke for long periods w/o opening the smoker. The temp control Dave suggested works great too. A slight disadvantage is that you have to monitor the temp and may have to make slight adjustments to keep the temp constant, but the only solution to that is to spend much more on a PID. Keep us posted!