Meat Temperature Flucation

flexfusion

Anyone have a thought why my internal meat temperature on my Boston butt is fluctuating between 180 and 185º?  It has been doing it more doing the last half of the cook.  I'm using a SMOBOT to monitor all temperatures.  Thanks! 

kweitz

It’s in the stall. Let smobot do it’s work and ride it out. You’re fine. 

flexfusion

Thank you!

kweitz

@flexfusion How did it turn out for ya?

flexfusion

Kweltz it turned out just great, and thank you for asking.  I was cooking a 5# butt and had the SMOBOT dialed into 280º which it held for about five hours.  From that point on I started getting fluctuations in grill and meat temp.  I had two factors I think working against me and they were small pieces (end of bag) of Rockwood charcoal and a 10 to 15 mph wind blowing into the rear of my of my Egg. I stayed with it as you suggested and nine hours later the butt had reached and internal temp of 195 when I pulled it.  My firebox was about burned out and only had two pieces lumps that were smoldering.  The next long cook I'm going to have bigger lumps in the Egg and leave the small pieces for shorter cooks.  How does that sound to you?  

lousubcap

For any low and slow cook you can, and should if you are unsure of the cook duration fill up into the fire ring.  This is the lump load that will get you the long duration cooks w/o any issues with running low on fuel.  Regarding large and small pieces of charcoal, the BTU's/lb are the same regardless of size.  All real small can present an air flow issue over a long cook and all large can result in loss of the fire if the fire doesn't make the leap across the pieces, again on the L&S cooks.  A mix is good with larger pieces on the bottom. 
Here's a link about fire building if you have the desire:
http://www.nakedwhiz.com/elder.htm  FWIW-