Wood chunks and temp control

For those of you who cook with chunks, does the temperature of your grill go up when the individual chunks light off?

I am having a hard time controlling my Kamado Joe when trying to maintain 225 degrees, and I think it might be the wood chunks I am using. It seems every 30 minutes or so, the grill wants to get hotter, so I close it down, which seems to stabilize it. About 30 minutes later, however, it does it again. Could this be caused by the wood chunks? The spikes tend to get up to 300 degrees and it is often hard to get it back down.

If it is the wood chunks, do you try to control the temps through the increase or just let it go? I would love to be able to do an overnight cook, but I just don't yet have the confidence that the temps won't get away from me while I sleep.

I don't know if it matters but my technique is to fill the grill often with a mix of left over charcoal and fresh charcoal. I then toss in some wood chips and a few chunks. I then light one starter cube, put my diffuser in place and leave the grill wide open until it gets to about 175 degrees. Hopefully about the same time, the smoke is no longer thick white, either way I open the lid to put my meat in, and then after closing it, set the top and bottom vents to barely open.

dwfisk said:

I'm not embarrassed to ask stupid questions any more, so here goes. What are you considering and unacceptable temp variation? There was a time when I would freak over 10* and start adjusting everything. Now, a bunch of years and cooks later, I pick a desired cook temp and set my iGrill alarms at about +/- 25*.

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Not a stupid question at all. While I would like to keep the temps within +/- 10 degrees, I don't freak out until it starts climbing beyond 25 degrees above my target. For example, today I wanted a target temp of 225 degrees and set my iGrill at 215 and 235. It wasn't until it hit 300 degrees, however, that I started getting upset.

Nope, didn't open the lid once other than to put the meat in and to take it out. I am not sure about an air leak though. I imagine that would be hard to locate. As my KJ is relatively new and my casket appears to be in good shape, however, I would be surprised is that was it.

I use an iGrill and the KJ's built in temp gauge.

Jon David said:

On my KJ for 225 range I use 1 Weber starter cube, place defuser, leave the top vent and bottom vent wide open till 195 then the close the bottom vent to 5/16" and the daisy wheel to 1/4 inch, (I have literally measured, sad I know...) and after about an hour from lighting I'm at a good and steady 220-235. I place the meat and it takes a few minutes to hit that range again. After about 3 hours it will creep to 250 then slowly come down. But depending on what your cooking a lot of BBQ is forgiving.

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It seems there is a lot of different techniques, and I appreciate everyone's input.

With your technique, Jon, when do you put your wood on? Put it on in the beginning and you miss a lot if smoke, but to put it on later, you have to move the grate and the diffuser.