Hi all, I was in love with my Akorn rotisserie setup but bored with birds, I decided to put some SLC ribs on a rotisserie setup. Ribs came from Costco pre-dry rub. Had three chunks of Kiawe wood on top of a snake of charcoals. No drip pan but the fire is on the side. Grill was around 350-400 degrees most of time and only took two hours for the ribs to be done. The rotisserie eliminated the under/over cooked spots and from now on I'll always do ribs on a rotisserie!
Check out the video I made and enjoy the weekend 
 
 

As the title suggests, I am looking for help getting my Akorn to act the way I want it to for smoking purposes. 

I have the smoking stone, use a water pan, and lower my dampers until it basically snuffs out my fire, but I cannot seem to keep my Akorn at 225. 

Now, I will admit that I am new to smoking and that there is a lot to be learned, but I have read tons of guides and watched videos and replicated them to my best ability, but still cannot get it to work for me. 
 
Currently, my process is this:
 
Open dampers all the way Fill bottom of grill full of hardwood lump Light with cotton balls soaked in alcohol Toss in a couple chunks of hickory Place my smoking stone Place my water pan Close lid and let set until 150 Close dampers halfway until 180 Close dampers again halfway until 210 Close dampers halfway one last time to about .5 on top and bottom.  
1 of 2 things happens here. Either the temp keeps building to nearly 300 or the fire dies. 
 
I play with the dampers making very small .5 adjustments to try and finagle it, but I cannot seem to get it right. 
 
When I do seem to get the temps in a semi stable range around 230-260 (after LOTS of adjustments), after about an hour I go to spritz my meat with some apple juice and the temps take off again (Obviously because I just fed it a lot of oxygen) and never seem to come back down. 
 
I have read about this "volcano" method of lighting the coals, but I literally have not found any videos or pictures on how to set that up. 
 
Basically, I have no idea what I am doing wrong and I could use someone being critical of my process to give me some advice and direction. 
 
Thanks for any feedback!

 
 

Finally I got around to finish this idea I had for a long time, ever since I made the pizza ring. I picked up a set of Weber Rotisserie and lathed part of the shaft round to fit the Akorn. I cut two little "V" on the pizza ring and the drive motor sits perfectly on top fo the side table - lucked out on that one! The chickens were marinaded with Hawaiian Huli Huli Sauce for two days, with some Hawaiian Salt Seasoning, freshly ground pepper and they turned out amazing. I gotta thank my neighbor who worked at a construction site and got me a tuck load of dried out Kiawe wood. It burns really hot and long lasting. I'm starting to put a kit together and will report back on the progress.
 
 

Hi all,
 
I have lately been researching about temperature controllers for Kamados. Several alternatives are out there and each of them have their fan base. A lot of the information available is based on feeling and intuition, which is great. However, I miss a repository of information based on factual data of the controller's performance provided by users. This is the intention of this thread and hopefully, it will serve to educate the audience, firstly on how to make the choice when buying a temperature controller and secondly how to best use them.
 
I have put together a set of questions for the people to answer that will help fellow BBQers immersed into the temperature controllers world.
 
Thank you all in advance for supporting this research project!
 
1. What Kamado cooker you are using?
2. What temperature controller do you have?
3. What are your vent and fan settings on your Kamado? (Pictures when available)
4. Where do you place your ambient probe for temperature control? (Pictures when available)
5. At what point on your cook you let the controller to take over
6. Please share the graph from your temperature control with eventual fan output
7. What do you love about your controller?
8. What would you improve about your controller?
9. Anything else you want to share
10. And last but not least, share pictures of your cook 

I thought I'd write a quick review of using the BBQ Guru Pit Viper fan and their Blaze Kamado adapter.
 
The adapter comes as two pieces, one for inside the grill and one for outside.
There are two hex-head screws and wingnuts to cinch it down in the opening.
It seems it's designed to go in from the inside, but I wanted to try to slip it in from the outside.
 
Here's my first attempt at that

 
This didn't work because the second bolt couldn't be pulled through the outer plate and cinched down.
 
Next I added jam nuts and washers (from my shop "spare parts bin," these are not included):
 

 

 
With those, I was able to insert the back plate and pull it through-- it was a tight fit with the bolts pressing against the Blaze's vent opening:
 

 
 
but it worked:
 

 
However, the front plate is not quite large enough and just barely covers the opening:
 
 

 
It did perform well with the fireboard and its motor control cable.
Note that although the cable has a separate input for the motor power, the fireboard itself will drive it without that.
I used an aux USB battery to keep the fireboard energized:
 

 
 
Hope this helps.  Would I buy it again?  Yes, but I wish BBQ Guru included the jam nuts and washers.  I also was surprised that the front plate just barely fit the opening.  It should be larger by about 5mm.
 
Tom