Merry Christmas everyone! Had my first smoked meal today and would love advice.

I'm not a master forge guy, I'm sure someone will be along shortly.  One thing is too make sure when you add water, that you are adding boiling or close to it water, otherwise that can drag your temp and recovery down.

Someone with more info will be here soon.

Good Luck!!

How big was your aluminum pan? Were you blocking off your heat source? 

Hi not a Master Forge guy but I do use propane. acouple of bumb questions dont be insulted but what color were are your flames, could you can you change the hight of the flames? Smoetimes I have to turn the tank off to then back on the get the flames going, If your flame is mostly yellow you nedd to adjust the air mixture. Instructions should be in the manual. Glad you could eat what you made as time goes on you will get better. have a merry.

It has been a while since I cooked in an upright water smoker, so take this for what it is worth.

You don't have a location in your profile, so we have no idea of what ambient temps you were working with?

I always liked adding HOT water to the water pan, especially in cold ambients.

Cooking the meat in a pan can slow the process under certain conditions.

Keep at it.  You will find that perfect combo!

Good luck and good smoking.

You may be choking your fire down w/ the vents? when the unit is open there is plenty of air so the flame looks good. next smoke try running your vents wide open and see what that does.

General guideline for charcoal, which may or may not apply to gas...is start it with vents wide open to reach the desired temp, then adjust vents to regulate or hold it at that range.  Give that a try along with the other suggestions above and don't get discouraged...it only gets better!

John

BigCase said:

I'm not a master forge guy, I'm sure someone will be along shortly.  One thing is too make sure when you add water, that you are adding boiling or close to it water, otherwise that can drag your temp and recovery down.

Someone with more info will be here soon.

Good Luck!!

Click to expand...

x2

Hey Nomorewine,  I just picked up a MF gasser to add to my 'herd' of smokers not to long ago and am still working out some kinks with it but I'll chime in with my $0.02.

First you mention that you used a different thermo  in the chamber, but where you placed it is fairly important.  Was is through the hole where the factory thermo was located?  The reason I ask is that I find there can be up to a 20 degree temp diff between the door temp (using a reliable thermo) and the temp in the middle of the chamber.  I really believe this is due to how the water pan blocks a lot of the heat coming up from the burner.  I typically use 3 thermos with my MF; a good Ashcroft analog in the door (which replaced the factory POS), a digital with the probe in the smoker chamber at approx the same height of the food being smoked and which is as close to dead center in the chamber as possible and one probe in the actual product.  I drilled two small holes in the side panel just below the handle so I could snake my probes through.
 

You also didn't mention what your target smoking temp was?  You mention that you couldn't get your smoker up to temp but what was the target?  I have no problem getting my MF up to 250 or higher and holding it there even if the outdoor ambient is around 45 degrees.  As other have said, if you can't get your smoker up to 250 and hold it there, you may have a bad regulator, bad LP or something else impeding heat generation.  There are also safety devices in the newer LP tanks that cut flow back by some ridiculous amount if you open the valve too quickly.  Also check the actual flame on the burner.  In the MF manual, there is some good info as to what a good flame should look like vs. what a bad LP flame looks like.

And this is more personal pref than anything else but was there any reason you put the turkey breast in an aluminum pan?  When I do poultry, I just place it right on the racks.  In my humble opinion this promotes better heat and smoke circulation around the product.

As for the burn in temps being OK that might have to do with the water pan.  You mention that you didn't have water in the pan when you ran your burn in?  I've found that the water pan being full or empty can impact the temps on this smoker.  I typically add room temp water to my water pan every time I toss in some chunks.  This keeps the pan from getting too low and needing to use hot water instead of room temp to replenish. But that's just me.  You def can't go wrong by adding boiling water as other have suggested.

The other mod that I've done to this smoker and there is a ton of info on this forum about doing so is using a fiberglass rope insulation kit to seal both doors.  Depending on how well or poorly your doors are sealing without the insulation, you could be losing a ton of heat from around the doors.  Lowe's sells the rope gasket kits and you'll need 2 kits to do both doors.

Shout out if I can be of any assistance and keep at it.  This is all supposed to be fun!  And, keep in mind,  I think we've all had to finish off a piece or 2 in the oven at some point!  It comes with the territory.... LOL

-Salt

When your unit is a gas unit then you should run your vents 90% open. You don't have as much adjustment with gas as you do with wood or charcoal.

mballi3011, with all due respect, I've found on my Master Forge I can run the bottom vents only about 25% open and the chimney vent either in the most closed position (you can't really completely close the chimney vent on the Master Forge) or one more notch more toward the open position and still maintain a 240-250 degree chamber temp with outdoor ambient around 50-60 degrees.  I also agree with you - because the Master Forge behaves the same way - when you crank the vents more toward the open position you can increase the internal chamber temps.  I've never tried running this smoker with the vents completely open, but I'll have to try that to see what kind of temps I can get.  Would be good to know this when the ambient temps get a bit colder.

-Salt