Bullseye New Bullseye

[Graying Mantis]

Received my new Bullseye yesterday, did my first cook tonight (Spatchcock chicken) and it turned out great. Had a shipping issue and Recteq customer service is living up to their billing and solving the problem.
I have a question about temperature control. On the burn-in it overshot to over 600 degrees, then ramped down to the 340s. After about 45 minutes it reached 400 and stayed there. I attributed that to the auger not being full and rushing to get pellets to the fire box. This morning I did another test and it overshot by about 50 degrees before throttling back. I took about 30-35 minutes to stabilize. I had heard it gets to temp in about 15 minutes, but I'm not seeing that. Is it typical to take a half hour or so to stabilize the temp?

 

[mpsantos]

Received my new Bullseye yesterday, did my first cook tonight (Spatchcock chicken) and it turned out great. Had a shipping issue and Recteq customer service is living up to their billing and solving the problem.
I have a question about temperature control. On the burn-in it overshot to over 600 degrees, then ramped down to the 340s. After about 45 minutes it reached 400 and stayed there. I attributed that to the auger not being full and rushing to get pellets to the fire box. This morning I did another test and it overshot by about 50 degrees before throttling back. I took about 30-35 minutes to stabilize. I had heard it gets to temp in about 15 minutes, but I'm not seeing that. Is it typical to take a half hour or so to stabilize the temp?

If you want it to be very stable, I would wait 30 minutes. Mine heats up really fast but i have noticed the fluctuations somewhat with the high/low temp difference getting tighter over the 30-45 minute range. Also, they state the the controller is learning initially, so you may see more fluctuations since you are just starting out with it. I ran mine for 1 hour and then 2 hours at first without cooking on it. So far, I really like the Bullseye.

 

[SmokinRump]

I've only had mine for about 2 months myself and over 20 something smokes have noticed some days it does what you describe and others it works as advertised. Through research on here, it seems everyone has their theories down to the algorithm and humidity, lol. One thing I do is just preload the firebox with a fistful of pellets if I'm in a hurry to get up to temp and it rarely takes more than 10 or 15 min to get to temp. As far as temperature, while cooking I usually set it at 50 degrees cooler than my desired temp and it usually puts me right there where I want it or close. All a minor inconvenience for me and I can still say I have no regrets getting the bullseye. I got it more for the grilling aspect but the few smokes I've done on it almost makes me wanna trade in my large stick burner for the larger recteqs. I live in Ga and in full sun and mid 80's temps I smoked a 7lb butt on Lo setting. My external thermometer read pretty consistently around 230 with occasional spikes in temps around 260 that didn't last very long. Now this smoke would easily take around 9 or 10 hours in my stick burner around the same temperatures but only took 5 and half hours on the the bullseye and came out nearly perfect, surprisingly. Tiny bit dry in the center some how. Anyways, still got some learning to do myself but I assume the faster smoke times is related to being closer to the heat source than what I'm used to in an off set. Hope this helps.

 

[Graying Mantis]

Thank you very much for the replies, they are very helpful.