Temperature Accuracy Timberline 1300

[Jcroberts]

Ribs always take longer than my brother-in-law who has a Traeger 575 Pro. I always thought it was because I live in the NE and the outside temp was cooler. We have ribs on today and outside temp is 75 degrees. My brother in-law is cooking today with me and thinks the grill temp is inaccurate. We want the inside grill temp to be 225 and we had to set it to 250. This was verified with a digital thermometer we inserted thru the temp prob hole. I called Traeger and they did not want to accept the digital prob information - odd. We also inserted the Traeger prob which only registered to 195 - really weird. Any insights from anyone?

 

[RayClem]

You should al;ways verify the accuracy of your thermocouple and temperature probe.

When I got my Ironwood, it did a firmware update. The thermocouple.went through a calibration procedure immediately afterward.
I calibrated the temperature probe in ice water.

When operating my grill for low and slow cooks, I always use digital probes, one to check the grill temp at grate level and one or more to check meat internal temperatures. I have found that the thermocouple in my ironwood is within a few degrees of the independent grill probe.

You also need to check your grill for hot and cold spots. I got an infrared thermometer to scan temps across the width of the grill. I found mine to be reasonably close, but some folks report differences that are quite significant. If there is a variation, you can take advantage of that by facing fat caps in the direction of highest temperature.

If your grilll temp indicators are reading incorrectly, you can adjust the setpoint, That is especially important when you are trying to cook low and slow and are trying to cook the meat to an internal temp that is only slightly below the boiling point of water as you would when smoking ribs to a final temperature of 200-205 degrees F.

 

[Timmy]

Search the forum. this is a common issue. If I set my traeger to 200 it runs 185, and gets worse as the temp is raised. I use my FireBoard to monitor temps and adjust the traeger to it. My traeger meat probe is with the instructions somewhere.

 

[Murphy's Law]

My 780 is accurate.

At 180.

Anything above that and I set it 25 degrees higher than target temp. Simple answer: Traeger is inaccurate.

 

[RJ101]

You really need probes you can put in at the grate level and leave in (Signals, Smoke, Fireboard, etc.) to see what the temperature is where you food will sit; I don't think that you can get an accurate read with a probe stuck through the wire port since there can be quiet a bit of variation in temps in the cook chamber. My 1300 is pretty accurate, at 225 it runs about the set point to 5 degrees hotter on the right side of the middle rack, about 10 degrees over set point on the left side, and the lower (main) rack about 5-10 degrees cooler than the middle rack. Never used or tested the top rack. To find your hot spots, you can do a biscuit test.