first long and slow

captaincraigb

I did my first long and slow last weekend. got up at 5am and put a 5lb piglet quarter on. checked the temp (225)for a bit while I hooked up the boat and put the rods on it. wife watched the temp while I was doing my mental health thing. about 4pm it platued at 170. about 5 the dome temp started to dump, the meat dumped with it, the dome went under 200 and the meat down to 159. opened the vents all the way and finally got it back up. Only thing i can figuer is ash blocked the air flow. Has anyone else seen this? anyway, kept a little more heat on it than I wanted and pulled it about 9pm. it still was pretty dang good, only lasted the wife and I 2 meals. anyone else have this kind of temp problems?

Borders

captaincraigb, I have. I think what you may have seen is a false reading on your polder. Here's what happens to me. My meat temp will read 190. I'll open the egg and it will drop to 170, and stay at 170. I think this means my polder is gaining some extra temps from the grill heating up the part of the polder that is outside of the meat. 170 is the true temp, not 190. There are a bunch of reasons why your dome temp may have dropped, but I bet your meat tempo didnt "really" drop.[p]This effect seems to be less apparent toward the end of the cook, when the meat really is 190. To test my theory, open your egg and see of the meat temp drops rapidly. It shouldnt if its a true meat temp.