Old Country Brazos Smoker uneven side-to-side temps

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blueridgesmoker
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Old Country Brazos Smoker uneven side-to-side temps

Postby blueridgesmoker » Sun Apr 26, 2020 8:20 am

I received my Old Country BBQ Pits Brazos smoker two days ago. Same as sold as Academy, but I bought it directly from the company in Laredo with Rick. On the phone call to purchase, I asked Rick about tuning plates. He said the Brazos generally has very even temps across the cook chamber and rarely ever needs tuning plates, so I passed on them. Yesterday I cleaned the smoker, sprayed the inside with cooking oil, and loaded two chimneys of charcoal to season the smoker. I had two temp probes in the cook chamber, one centered about 6-8 inches in front of the stack opening and the other on the fire box side, centered above the opening of the deflector plate. For the entire burn, the temps on the stack side were 50 to over 100 degrees hotter than on the firebox side. I moved the probes side by side for a few minutes and they were within 1 degree of each other, so not a probe accuracy problem. Also swapped probes side to side with no change. I expected the fire box side to be hotter, no the stack side. I several combinations of closing down the stack and firebox vents, but no improvement. I'm somewhat new to smoking, having used a COS that I modified. Even that one had only a 7-9 degree difference from side to side.

I'm stumped. Looking for any help/advice.
k.a.m. USER_AVATAR
k.a.m.
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Re: Old Country Brazos Smoker uneven side-to-side temps

Postby k.a.m. » Mon Apr 27, 2020 8:44 am

How big of a coal base were you running and how open were the intakes?
The exhaust is low so my guess is you were running a good size coal base with at least a 1/4 intake open this causes a hard draft firebox to exhaust and heating the right side.
Try a little over a medium coal base and only about 1/8 intake I am talking about a 1/4" gap exhaust wide open.
Always remember slow and steady wins the race.



My Hybrid cooker.
Competition trailer #2.
marvda1
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Re: Old Country Brazos Smoker uneven side-to-side temps

Postby marvda1 » Mon Apr 27, 2020 10:28 pm

keep the stack end wide open and adjust at the intake.
use smaller splits of wood, get a kindling cracker.
blueridgesmoker
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Re: Old Country Brazos Smoker uneven side-to-side temps

Postby blueridgesmoker » Thu Apr 30, 2020 9:45 am

Many thanks for the replies. I was put in touch with the service rep and we had a good conversation. Apparently, I wasn't choking down the stack damper enough. I ran it again yesterday with sticks and played more with the dampers and was able to get much more even temps. I'll keep burning and learning until I'm confident I have a good handle on it before putting the meat on. Should be soon. Thanks again!
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Re: Old Country Brazos Smoker uneven side-to-side temps

Postby Rambo » Thu Apr 30, 2020 10:14 am

blueridgesmoker wrote:Many thanks for the replies. I was put in touch with the service rep and we had a good conversation. Apparently, I wasn't choking down the stack damper enough. I ran it again yesterday with sticks and played more with the dampers and was able to get much more even temps. I'll keep burning and learning until I'm confident I have a good handle on it before putting the meat on. Should be soon. Thanks again!


I'm no expert on this but my stack damper is ALWAYS WIDE OPEN. I control the air with the fire Box Damper
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Re: Old Country Brazos Smoker uneven side-to-side temps

Postby GRailsback » Thu Apr 30, 2020 1:19 pm

Build a fire and through some meat on it.
damdana259
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Re: Old Country Brazos Smoker uneven side-to-side temps

Postby damdana259 » Mon Oct 12, 2020 12:58 pm

Any updates on stack and fire box damper settings?

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