Char-Griller / King-Griller Akorn first Smoke

I have long wanted a kamado style grill/smoker.  I had read a large amount regarding these things on various websites and forums.  I heard about their amazing ability to hold stead temperatures for low and slow BBQ along with the ability, when wanted, to kick it into high gear and cook at 700+ degrees.  It seemed like the perfect thing to quench my desire for BBQ and grilling in one box.  But then comes the downside… these things are expensive!

For a high quality ceramic kamado (Big Green Egg, Primo, Kamado Joe, etc.) you are going to be pushing or into the $1000+ dollar range just to get started.  Now don’t get me wrong, I still want one of these bad boys… but I first wanted to get into the game without quite that much commitment.  Enter the Char-Griller (or King-Griller depending on where you bought it, mine is a King-Griller) Akorn kamado.  The guys can be had from the low $200’s and although not to the quality of the previously mentioned bad boys can be made pretty easily to produce outstanding results!

Here are some pics of my first low and slow BBQ (a 7 pound Pork Butt):

  

I was able to hold temps in this thing around 225 (+/- 15 degrees) for 12 hours.  I did need to baby sit it a bit and make adjustments a few times for the temp, but for a grill I paid $250 bucks for I will take it!

So what does this have to do with a tech blog?  Well, I want to add a temperature controller which will automatically do the baby sitting for me… basically a set it and forget it type of device that reads the temperature of the pit and controls the airflow through the cooker to maintain a temperature I set (just like your indoor oven).  Now there are a few products out there that are commercially available to do this.  The less expensive ones are no frills and just do the job I mentioned.  The higher end ones have Wi-Fi and web servers built in along with recording capabilities of the entire cook, etc.  Obviously, I want one of the more fancy ones being the tech geek I am!  Once again the issue comes down to price, the ones with no frills are going to run about $150 bucks, but the nicer network enabled ones are over $400!  Enter an open source project called Heatermeter… this project uses a Raspberry Pi and custom assembled hardware to create a full fledged BBQ pit controller including WI-FI for the same price or less of the cheaper commercial products out there.  The downside… quite a lot of soldering required.  I have put one together, but not yet tested it in a cook.  Check out my next blog post which will go more into my Heatermeter assembly.