Hey yall. First smoke on my new MES 40 today..woot woot! So, being a converted charcoal guy, I have a couple questions.
1) I have seen some posts stating that the built in meat probe is off by quite a bit. Have you guys noticed that the MES itself seems off? I ran the unit at about 225 and it seems to not be cooking as quickly as what my charcoal vertical smoker did (maybe my vertical was hot or had hot spots). And the meat prob consistently said it was about 35 deg below what the smoker was saying it was. I'm cooking babybacks and country style pork (boneless). My plan is to throw a thermometer in there that I know is calibrated to check it out, but I thought I'd ask around. Do you normally cook ribs at 225 in the MES? I always shot for that in my vertical charcoal unit, but maybe I need to aim a little higher in the MES.
2) While I'm still using the stock chip holder (thought I'd at least give it a try before I purchased an AMNS), I'm getting some really good smoke, but there doesn't seem to be much of a bark developing. Does this change with the AMNS? Anything else I should do?
Thanks in advance!
I'll post some pics of the finished product in a little while.
1) I have seen some posts stating that the built in meat probe is off by quite a bit. Have you guys noticed that the MES itself seems off? I ran the unit at about 225 and it seems to not be cooking as quickly as what my charcoal vertical smoker did (maybe my vertical was hot or had hot spots). And the meat prob consistently said it was about 35 deg below what the smoker was saying it was. I'm cooking babybacks and country style pork (boneless). My plan is to throw a thermometer in there that I know is calibrated to check it out, but I thought I'd ask around. Do you normally cook ribs at 225 in the MES? I always shot for that in my vertical charcoal unit, but maybe I need to aim a little higher in the MES.
2) While I'm still using the stock chip holder (thought I'd at least give it a try before I purchased an AMNS), I'm getting some really good smoke, but there doesn't seem to be much of a bark developing. Does this change with the AMNS? Anything else I should do?
Thanks in advance!
I'll post some pics of the finished product in a little while.