Hey guys,
I have a Pitmaster IQ. Let me start by saying this. I have a Uvalde Texas Smokers 16X32" horizontal offset smoker. It's made of 1/4" steel on the firebox and smoke chamber. When I bought it, it was well built but not completely sealed around the lid of the smoke chamber and firebox and where the firebox door is. This was a simple fix with Nomex high heat oven gaskets and it is absolutely efficient now. An upgrade I'd recommend for any pit now properly sealed.
Now, let me say, with the above upgrade, I was doing pretty good but kept reading about these Auto Temp Controllers. Of course me being a backyard pro and the neighborhood guru, you start thinking about how to make things better! So I did my research and went with a Pitmaster IQ. I only wanted a temp controller nothing more and did not want to spend a fortune. My only reluctance with this was that no one had anything to say about this product unless you had a Weber. There were no reviews (that I found anyway) on a cooker like mine. But deductive reasoning told me it had to work as I watched and read more about it.
It does work as designed. All I will say, is that you have to know your pit and you have to provide the right conditions. What I mean by this is that you have to take into consideration the size of your pit, construction (not only how it's made but what is it made of), and cooking efficiency. Once you are able to minimize surplus air and know where to place your exhaust vents (whatever works best on your cooker) the IQ works perfect. It did for me anyway. My cooker takes longer than a Weber to reach tempature. That's because it's bigger and it's made of thick steel. It takes longer to rise to temp but will hold it longer. I'll admit on a cold day (55 degrees) it took about 45 minutes for the IQ to reach temp. But once it did, as long as I did my part by adding fuel (twice) in 15 hours, it was great. A true set it and forget it. It would appear to me that many of the bad reviews are from folks that might not know their pit or how to control some of the variables that exist. Maybe they did have a faulty product but I would say that when given a chance and working properly, for the price, the IQ is the backyard King. The variable fan and the integrated algorithm that learns your pit are a true asset for a serious backyarder. I could only imagine that it would do the competitition circuit justice. Especially since those guys are no joke and know their purpose. Thanks Pitmaster IQ for making a great product.
