TEMPERTURE CONTROL EXPERT NEEDED!!!

Unknown

Cooking a 12lb brisket. It has been on for 4hrs temperture started at 250 and has been at 200 since. I do not see any smoke coming out of the top as normal. But I feel that there is heat coming out of dasiy wheel.
I had the bottom vent halfway open for 40 mins. No change in yet. How long do I have to wait?

Knauf

That's a big hunk of meat. make sure your temp probe is not touching the meat when the dome is closed. When you first set on butt that big on the temp will drop and if you put it on cold it will take a while to get the temp back up. try "pushing" the fire a little to see if you get any rise and then start to back off.

Celtic Wolf

Get a coat hanger and straighten it out. At one end make a 90 bend when the part sticking up is about 2-3 inches.

Open the bottom vent and screen and feel around the fire grate pushing that bent end up through the holes.

Once that temp is back to 250 shut down the vents to maintain that temp.

This is assuming that the fire box opening is aligned with the vent.

As for smoke. Not seeing it is a good thing.

Car Wash Mike

Take your time. At 200 you are imparting a better smoke ring and flavor.

Mike

PhilsGrill

Before you started you throughly cleaned out all the ash from the egg, verified all air holes were cleared, fire box aligned with the lower vent and filled the egg with fresh lump all the way up to the top of the firebox?

UnConundrum

You didn't state where the probe is, but I assume you're using the dome thermometer to indicate the temp. That said, I have seen cooks where the meat seems to absorb the BTUs and the dome temp can be tuff to maintain. I usually use two probes, one at grate and one at dome. I use the grid to determine the health of the fire, and the dome helps me understand what's going on inside.

If you're interested, follow this link to a graph of an 18 pound chuck roast I did. Look at the lower "fire" graph. The blue line is the grate/pit temperature and the yellow is the dome. You can see that the dome started out quite a bit hotter than the grate, but then, 2/3 into the cook, dropped down below the grate temp. When it came back up, I knew the roast wasn't sucking BTUs as fast and the meat was soon done.

Now, I can't say for sure what's going on with your cook. Follow the wise advice given by the other members. Make sure you have the firebox aligned properly with the lower door, and that you don't have your air holes clogged with charcoal...