Lexington 500 temp issue

[unerbreadbore]

Hi 'm new here and kinda new to smoking. I've smoked maybe 8 pork butts on my Lexington 500. I'm having problems with keeping my temp up when using fruit woods like peach. Well I guess any type of wood pellets. I'll set them temp to 250 after initial start up and let it warm up and put the inkbird oven probe on the grate. Once the my ink bird says its at 250 ill let the smoker sit for 15-20 mins just to let everything warm up inside. After its warmed up ill put the meat on and watch it for 3 hours. During this 3 hours the temp may reach 225 once or twice then drop to like 180 during smoke cycle then come back up to 212 then would drop to to about 207 and stay there until next cycle ( verified on inkbird oven probe). The last time I smoked a butt was the night before the OU TEXAS game last year and it was 55-60 outside and was using peach wood, After about 12 hrs on the smoker the internal temp was 145ish so i ended up wraping it and finshing it the oven for fear of it not being done in time for the game day party i was throwing. The reason I set my smoker to 250 is because of pervious problems I had when setting it to 225. When i had it set to 225 the smoker would hit 225 once or twice then stay at about 200 or lower. Any tips, tricks or advice would be helpful.

 

[Freedbyjc]

Hi 'm new here and kinda new to smoking. I've smoked maybe 8 pork butts on my Lexington 500. I'm having problems with keeping my temp up when using fruit woods like peach. Well I guess any type of wood pellets. I'll set them temp to 250 after initial start up and let it warm up and put the inkbird oven probe on the grate. Once the my ink bird says its at 250 ill let the smoker sit for 15-20 mins just to let everything warm up inside. After its warmed up ill put the meat on and watch it for 3 hours. During this 3 hours the temp may reach 225 once or twice then drop to like 180 during smoke cycle then come back up to 212 then would drop to to about 207 and stay there until next cycle ( verified on inkbird oven probe). The last time I smoked a butt was the night before the OU TEXAS game last year and it was 55-60 outside and was using peach wood, After about 12 hrs on the smoker the internal temp was 145ish so i ended up wraping it and finshing it the oven for fear of it not being done in time for the game day party i was throwing. The reason I set my smoker to 250 is because of pervious problems I had when setting it to 225. When i had it set to 225 the smoker would hit 225 once or twice then stay at about 200 or lower. Any tips, tricks or advice would be helpful.

Add charcoal pellets to your mix. They are burn hotter than the wood pellets and will help bring temperatures up.

Your smoker’s air vent at the back of the barrel. Always run it wide open for the best air flow at startup. It’s NOT a chimney damper like on a stick burner that you need to adjust to control the heat in the barrel. The awesome PitBoss controller constantly monitors the digital temperature probe readings and its algorithms runs the auger to regulate the heat in the barrel and the combustion fan runs constantly to help maintain the fire... so you don’t have to babysit it.



It is just an air vent ... wide open will give you the best air flow for a quicker startup and the best temperature maintenance.



Running your smoker with the air vent closed down can cause it to take a long time to come to temperature, overheat and cause a flameout or an ERH overheat error code.