Sous Vide With A Guru Or Other Pit Controller?

Q-Dat

Q-Dat

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Ok here's what I am wondering.

Suppose you had a pot of liquid on the grate of a Kamado style cooker with the pit temp probe suspended in the liquid. How successfully could said controller regulate the temperature of the liquid?

I know that you can accomplish this easier with a crock pot and an electronic controller, but I have my reasons for wanting to do this on the pit.

Thanks for any help.
 
Sounds like a lot of extra work, but my controllers regulate the temperature of my pits by controlling the fire, not the temperature of the food (or in your case the water pot).

The fire continually spikes up and down to try and even out the internal temperature of the pit.

I don't have an answer for you, but you may want to contact the manufacturer of the controller you are intending to use.
 
Not well. And you are asking for damaged probes.

However... if your pit is say 150 degrees, any liquid in it would be 150 as time approaches infinity. Best thing to do is measure the amount of time it take for liquid to reach temp and not try to cook in it until you are sure that you are there.

FWIW oil and water will react differently.
 
Hawg Father of Seoul said:
Not well. And you are asking for damaged probes.

However... if your pit is say 150 degrees, any liquid in it would be 150 as time approaches infinity. Best thing to do is measure the amount of time it take for liquid to reach temp and not try to cook in it until you are sure that you are there.

FWIW oil and water will react differently.
Click to expand...

Ever tried running an egg or otherwise that low?
 
Why not try it out and see how it works. If you put your pit probe in the liquid you may be able to get to temperature but may have issues with spikes in temperatures (overshoots). Alternately you could try to use the regular pit probe in the pit, put the food probe in the water and use the ramp mode on the guru to maintain the water at the temperature you want.
 
Thermodynamics of air and liquids are different. If he is trying to do this on an egg... the egg will be 700 degrees before the water hits 150 and try taking an egg from 700 to below 150 (to drop the temperature when it sails past 150) by controlling draft.

Q-Dat, I am not an egg head. Done it on a drum, small diameter, tall fire basket. Diffuser plate would be an asset.
 
if you go in ramp mode - you are setting the pit temperature independant of the meat/liquid temperature. So basically if you set your pit to 250 for example and enable ramp mode with the proper meat setting, the controller will start cutting back on the pit temp is it begins approaching your set food temp. Going with a lower pit temperature initially as I am suggesting would require extra time obviously but would be easier to control. I'm not sure how responsive the egg is - but again I think it comes to a time thing.

http://www.thebbqguru.com/products/low-slow-ramp-mode.html
 
Might work if you prewarm the liquid before putting it on the cooker. Starting with the liquid at temp would avoid the overshoot on the pit.
 
Now that I really think about it, it seems that if you were to keep the pit temp at 150(or any other temp) right below the container in the oven like atmosphere inside a kamado style cooker that eventually ambient temp inside the coomer and the liquid temp should equalize.

Am I overlooking something?
 
It would take you a long time to warm up the water inside the pit if you start out with the pit at 150. Water has a high specific heat meaning you have to add a lot of work to raise it's temperature by one degree. If you heat the water to the target temp and drop it into the pit already cruising at 150 you're not guaranteed that the water will stay at 150. If you want to control the temp of the water you may have to throttle the pit temp up and down to hold the water temperature stable.
 
Gonna have to give this a shot on my Bubba Keg and see what happens.
 
I think that the fire would be way too unstable to control the water temp. The air around the pot wouldn't provide a good constant control to the water. In a crock pot, you got the water in direct contact with the heat source so it can regulate it pretty well and get it up to temp pretty quickly. Seems like the fire would overshoot and have a REALLY hard time maintaining it. I think you'd be better off doing the old cooler method. I've read about it here but never tried it, but seems to work well from what I've read on other forums. Be cool to try that though and see if it might work.

Beer Cooler Sous Vide
 
I messed with this thought a few years ago.
Put a pan of hot water in the Traeger at 300 +
Had a probe in the water and let it rum to 190 ish , well above my target temp of 155 ish.
Put some VacuSucked Chickie in there.
Temp dropped immediately. as expected.
Held the pit temp up till the water recovered to 155. then lowered pit temp to 200 ish.
Water held somewhere around target temp.

Was totally not worth the effort!

TIM
 
I am a manufacturer of controllers for smoker and sous vide.
There are several plans for you. But I can not discuss more commercial here, or the webmaster will chase me out.
But I have great curiocity, can you explain why you do sous vide this way than crock pot.
 
Hawg Father of Seoul said:
Thermodynamics of air and liquids are different. If he is trying to do this on an egg... the egg will be 700 degrees before the water hits 150 and try taking an egg from 700 to below 150 (to drop the temperature when it sails past 150) by controlling draft.

Q-Dat, I am not an egg head. Done it on a drum, small diameter, tall fire basket. Diffuser plate would be an asset.
Click to expand...
a smarter controller can simply avoid what you said
 
woodpelletsmoker said:
But I have great curiocity, can you explain why you do sous vide this way than crock pot.
Click to expand...


Basically I am not actually going to attempt a true Sous Vide. I want to control the temperature of the butter bath that we use for chicken in competitions. Only the use of wood or charcoal is allowed as a heat source.
 
Q-Dat said:
Basically I am not actually going to attempt a true Sous Vide. I want to control the temperature of the butter bath that we use for chicken in competitions. Only the use of wood or charcoal is allowed as a heat source.
Click to expand...

And I thought you were planning on a confit coppa to turn in at comps. :wink:
 
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