First Pork Butt smoke on the new MES440s

[rkrider99]

Today is the day. Rubbed the butts yesterday, and pulled them out this morning after I pulled the smoker out of the garage. And wouldn't you know it, a light drizzle. Electrics and water don't mix well. So pulled the smoker into the front lanai.

Powered her up, got it up to temp of 275 within 20 minutes. Unwrapped the butts and put them in the smoker. Added a chunk of hickory to this new fangled custom smoking chamber (Masterbuilt's words) and set the smoke level to 3.

About an hour into it, I noticed the temp of the smoker was 419 degrees and climbing...Oh, crap, a disaster in the making. Smoke was pouring out of the smoker. The only thing I could figure out was the hickory chunk caught on fire. Grabbed the tongs and bbq glove and opened the smoking chamber door. Sure enough, flaming away. Pulled the chunk out and threw it in a bucket of water. Opened the smoker door to cool it down a bit until it hit 350, and start reassessing the situation. Looks like the embers from the wood fall into the ash tray and with all the residual heat, cause the wood chunk to flame away. I think this chunk of wood would have lasted 4-5 hours if it hadn't burst into flames.

Thinking it through, I thought why not put about a quarter inch of water in the ash tray to extinguish the ashes as they drop. I also put in a new chunk of hickory, and set the smoke level to 1. After another 30 minutes or so, I noticed very little smoke, so I upped the smoke level to 2. Now I'm getting a nice light blue smoke.

On another note, just call me stupid: You'll notice one of the butts is larger than the other. They were on sale a couple of months ago, and I thought I'd grab a large one, and a smaller one for a shorter cook time. So, yesterday, when I unwrapped them, I look at the weights. Both say 6.5 pounds. Weighing the smaller one, it's a little over 4 pounds. Got overcharged on that one.

I'll update this as the day goes on, if there is any other interesting news, and of course with the finished product.

Time in smoker - 2:40 - small butt IT 120, large butt IT 110.

 

[JLeonard]

Lot of fun learning a new toy aint it. Looks like a good start on the butts. I'll be around for the finish.
Jim

 

[KiwiCanuk]

Lot of fun learning a new toy aint it. Looks like a good start on the butts. I'll be around for the finish.
Jim

 

[KiwiCanuk]

Thanks rkrider99. Where did you get the racks above the pans? Nice clean setup.

 

[JLeonard]

Thanks rkrider99. Where did you get the racks above the pans? Nice clean setup.

Hey Kiwi, what I did is go to Walmart and get a couple of baking cooling racks. Use them over the aluminum pans. Great for drippings and helps keep the smoker clean.
Jim

 

[KiwiCanuk]

Hey Kiwi, what I did is go to Walmart and get a couple of baking cooling racks. Use them over the aluminum pans. Great for drippings and helps keep the smoker clean.
Jim

Thank you Jim. I should have done this years ago!

 

[rkrider99]

Thanks rkrider99. Where did you get the racks above the pans? Nice clean setup.

I've had those racks for so long, I can't remember. You can never have enough racks. The pans are from either Costco or BJ's. I just lucked out on having the right size racks around. Thanks.

 

[cracadorsnm]

thnx for sharing

 

[rkrider99]

Well, I didn't want everyone to think I got info from the site, and then just ran off, but after getting to bed at midnight, and having to be on the first tee at 7 AM this morning, I couldn't stay awake to update this thread last night.

In a nutshell, yesterday was somewhat of a disaster. Probably mostly user error, but quite a bit of smoker error, as well.

Let's start with the smoker. After using it for one day, I'm disappointed. Between the wood chunks catching fire, and overheating the smoker, the Bluetooth capabilities being as bad as others have mentioned, and then the actual control panel acting up, I'm not sure I even want to keep this smoker.

The wood chunks in the custom smoke chamber caught fire 3 times during the day. The first, I realized when I saw the temp spiking to over 400 degrees, and saw smoke pouring out of the smoker. The other two times, I was ready for it, and if I saw excessive smoke, I'd watch the temps. If they hit 300, I knew we had a fire going. Open the smoke chamber door, remove the wood, and try again. If I keep this smoker, I WILL be getting an Amazen to replace the custom smoke feature.

As the day progressed, I was sitting outside not 7-10 feet away from the smoker, and the smoker app on my phone said smoker disconnected. Try reconnecting, sometimes it would, sometimes it wouldn't. I'd say it happened 5-7 times. Unacceptable! A few times, the only way to get it to reconnect was to power off the smoker, unplug it from the power, and wait about 30 seconds. Plug it back in, power it on, and it seemed to work again, until the next time it disconnected.

I pretty much stopped using the BT app, and instead checked the control panel display. It normally cycles from Time -> Temp -> P1 -> P2 -> P3 -> P4 -> and back to Time. I was looking at it, and all it was showing was Time. Hit the OFF/ON switch, but it still came back with just Time. I think I read something on this site about the probes getting hung up, so I unplugged the probes and sure enough, the display started cycling again. Plugged the probes back in, and it continued working.

I'm not sure all this software is ready for prime time yet. I should have just saved my money and stayed with my Weber kettle, or bought the cheapest manual smoker I could find.

So on with the user errors. Figuring 1.5 hours per pound for smoking these pork butts, I was thinking the 6.5 pounder would be somewhere in the 9 to 10 hour range. Ok, this wasn't planned for dinner last night, Tuesday is pizza night, I put them on at 8 AM, thinking they'd be done around 6 PM. IT of the butts was 40 degrees when I put them on the smoker. To cut to the chase, at 9 PM I pulled them from the smoker and put them in a 350 degree oven for another 2 hours to get to 200 degrees. I did not foil them until I put them in the oven, hoping that I wouldn't be up all night.

I'm not sure why it would take over 15 hours to smoke a 4 pound and 6 pound butt. The smoker was set to 275 degrees, and according to my oven probe that I had sitting in the middle of the oven, it was registering around 250-260. Could it be that I had the butts sitting above foil pans? As the drippings and grease filled the pans, could they have acted as a heat sink? I did have the water pan in the bottom of the smoker, but nothing in the pan, no water. I also had both vents fully open on the top of the smoker. The smoker door stayed sealed other than twice. The first time to lower the temp when it went over 400 degrees, and the second time, when the neighbors wanted to see whats cooking.

Any assistance would be greatly appreciated. It's not like I haven't done this before. I've been smoking pork butts in my 22" Weber kettle for years, normally not taking longer than 8-10 hours, and that's with lifting the lid numerous times to add charcoal and wood. I'm just looking for a simpler way, and I'll tell you this isn't simple.

I have no pics of the finished butts, but the pizza's turned out great!

 

[cracadorsnm]

according to me, I thought why not put about a quarter-inch of water in the ashtray to extinguish the ashes as they drop. I also put in a new chunk of hickory and set the smoke level to washdown pumps. After another 30 minutes or so, I noticed very little smoke, so I upped the smoke level to 2. Now I'm getting a nice light blue smoke.