ThermaQ vs 10 year old(ish) BGE Thermo hah!

json2001

Just a quick story / experience to share:

I've been cooking on my BGE for years and years now. Lots and lots of pork shoulders. I got a ThermoQ for Christmas and had my first smoke, so I hooked it all up this morning. WHOA! What a difference!

The ThermoQ was showing a smokehouse temp of 225 and the BGE factory thermo was showing in the neighborhood of 150...maybe... 

My working theory now is that the BGE thermo has been showing lower temps for a while now. I remember when I first got the BGE thinking..."Damn this barbecue thing really takes a long time (like 12 hours long)" then over time I thought "I guess I've just gotten the hang of this and it's going faster (like 6hrs)". Today, I have been happily set back to the 12+ hour mark and damn are these shoulders just bursting.

I figured the BGE thermo was not super accurate, but that far off was a real surprise!

I'm sure we've all heard it 100 times by now, but folks, don't trust that dinky factory thermometer.

YukonRon

Just had a similar experience. I noticed an issue on a very, very cold day, (-9F Wind Chill) while doing multiple racks of ribs.
Midway through, with dome failing to reach 200F, I pulled the thermo, scraped off the creosote build up, replaced it, and it went back to 225F, where I wanted it to be.
After that cook, I did a beef tenderloin for my son's birthday, the temp gauge was a bit off from my normal vent settings, so I removed it, again, to test with boiling water. I cleaned the surface, and it registered 212F, on the money.
No adjustments were made, and prior to the next cook, at an ambient temp of 38F the thermometer, read 700F. 
There is no way the temp could have gotten that high, too much fuel was left in the KAB, not clean enough internally for such a high heat, and zero stress to the felt gaskets.
Replaced it with the new one, works like it should. Mine lasted to somewhere around 500+ cooks, better than I had hoped. My previous experience was less than 100 or so, then replace.
If Smokeware can do better than that, when the next one goes, I will replace it with one of those.
Curious to know how long they last with constant use.

Mosca

Calibrate your dome thermo with boiling water. The dome temp doesn't usually match the grate temp, but at least you can be confident of the reading.

json2001

I didn't know that was even possible! I'll do just that. Thank you!