Bear, I'd appreciate your feedback. Yesterday--which was sunny and warm--I had my MES 30 Gen 1 warming up to a set point of 250°. After placing the BBQ probe of my ET-733 inside the smoker I saw the temp shoot up to 300-302°.
Did you go right to 250° Non-stop from the start? When I lowered the set point to 220° and opened the door to let the heat and closed it again, it shot up to 300° again.
How long did you have the door open? This was happening while I was letting my
AMNPS heat up on the ground outside the smoker. The final time I set it at 220° it went up to 252° and stayed there until I reduced the temp to 190°
Your saying it went to 252°, and didn't come down to the 220° temp setting??? For how long was this? after leaving the door open and closing it again, and the temp stayed about 217°. I put in 4 ribeye steaks along with the
AMNPS and the controller temp stayed solid at 220°. I wound up bumping the temp up to 250° because I was afraid the steaks would take too long to get to 95° IT. As it turned out they got up there more quickly than I figured, slightly before the coals in my
Weber kettle charcoal grill were ready. I let the steaks go up to 117° IT before pulling them from the smoker.
I made sure I again cleaned the hi temp shutoff switch which had been clean before I turned the smoker on. I've read your posts on how the MES controller works but I don't understand why the temp got so high in the empty smoker and then settled down just before I put the steaks and the
AMNPS in. Once I got the temp stabilized I had no further problems with my MES. It performed great as always.
First of all if it's hot out, and you set your MES for 250° right from the start, it can over-run to 300°, however you shouldn't have to turn your setting down to 220° and open the door to get the heat down. Unless there's something wrong with your control, it will get back down to your setting eventually without changing your setting. It may take awhile because the whole inside was at 300°, so it takes awhile to cool down.
I wish I knew exactly what you did, because it depends on how long you opened the door. If you only opened it for a minute or so, then closed the door, it could go back to 300° because everything inside is still at 300°, but if you opened the door long enough to get the whole thing down to 220°, there's no way it should go back to 300°. I don't care how hot it is, the sun isn't going to take it up to 300°.
Why did you set it at 250° to smoke a Steak??
There's a lot of things you didn't tell me here.
Bear