Hello from SoCal

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FV Dave

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Original poster
Hi everyone
I'm Dave from Fountain Valley CA. I have been trolling the forum for about 2 months and have learned quite a bit. Recently retired and now have some time to try smoking some meats. Read "some time" as I am still quite busy and can not read the forum daily. I am using an 18 inch WRM that I got a little over a month ago.

So far I have smoked ribs and chicken. Both came out pretty good but improvement is needed. The forum has got me going in the right direction but I have a lot to learn and a lot of questions. I will start with only one on my intro.

I bought a Therm Pro digital thermometer (orange one with two probes) and have used it twice now. I noticed the thermometer on the WRM reads about 22 degrees lower than the digital. Is there that much of a temperature difference between the top grill and the lid of the smoker? If not, which one should I go by? I think the digital would be more accurate.

Great forum and I hope to learn a lot more.

Dave
 
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Hi everyone
I'm Dave from Fountain Valley CA. I have been trolling the forum for about 2 months and have learned quite a bit. Recently retired and now have some time to try smoking some meats. Read "some time" as I am still quite busy and can not read the forum daily. I am using an 18 inch WRM that I got a little over a month ago.

So far I have smoked ribs and chicken. Both came out pretty good but improvement is needed. The forum has got me going in the right direction but I have a lot to learn and a lot of questions. I will start with only one on my intro.

I bought a Therm Pro digital thermometer (orange one with two probes) and have used it twice now. I noticed the thermometer on the WRM reads about 22 degrees lower than the digital. Is there that much of a temperature difference between the top grill and the lid of the smoker? If not, which one should I go by? I think the digital would be more accurate.

Great forum and I hope to learn a lot more.

Dave
Welcome! I hope you are doing well!
 
Welcome from the IE. You are just a short drive away. You want to judge your temp by the probe at grate level. That's where your food is being cooked. The lid gauge can be used as a point of reference if it is consistently the same difference from the grate probe. If you use the grate level reading then you will have much better results.

George
 
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Welcome Dave from NW Georgia. You have come to a happy place.

Check your Thermo Pro thermometer in boiling water to be sure it’s accurate and then see what the difference is consistently between the two. My bet is on the Thermo Pro being accurate.

Weedeater
 
Welcome from Virginia Dave.George and weedeater have your first question covered well.Keep'em coming or use the search function at the top of the page.
Smoke it if ya got it.
 
Thanks everyone for the warm welcome and answers to my question. I like the boiling water test. Sort of a ball park calibration and correlation between the two thermometers. Thanks weedeater.

Yesterday I was smoking some chicken and I noticed the Therm Pro and the WSM thermometer were pretty close in the 120 degree and below range. However over 130 the difference increased almost exponentially until there was a 22 degree difference.
 
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