Operating The Flame Boss Controllers

As we pointed out earlier, the Flame Boss blower does not have any type of damper. BBQ Guru blowers have a manually operated sliding damper which you can set to match the conditions of your cooking. The Stoker and the Auber controllers have blowers with a gravity controlled flap that automatically shuts when the blower is not operating. Both types of dampers serve to restrict the amount of air that flows into the cooker when the blower is not operating. This "extra" airflow can come both from just the chimney effect of air passing through the cooker, as well as air forced into the cooker by any breeze there happens to be. The Flame Boss blower is oriented with the intake perpendicular to the ground so that any breeze coming from that side of the cooker can force air into the cooker.

How much effect does this have on the Flame Boss's ability to control the temperature? When testing on a large Big Green Egg cooker, we found that a relatively gentle breeze blowing at the intake kept the cooker at 318°F when the unit was trying keep it at 300°F. To solve this problem, we fashioned crude shield from aluminum foil (see below) and the temperature dropped to 300°F relatively quickly.

The second problem is simply air entering the cooker through the blower's intake when it is not operating. When we operated the Flame Boss at 300°F and 375°F this had no impact. However at lower temperatures, it can allow more air than you would like to enter the cooker. If your cooker is not very airtight, this might impact your ability to keep the cooker where you want it. We found on our large Big Green Egg, that despite a small leak in the gasket, we could keep the temperature at 225°F if we were careful not to let the cooker get hotter first.

We showed you this photo earlier of our home made shield to keep any breeze from affecting the temperature. Also, Flame Boss gave us the idea of improvising a damper if really necessary by placing a piece of tape over the blower's outlet nozzle to restrict the airflow. We used a high temperature flue tape from Ace Hardware:

Note: Flame Boss is looking into whether or not they will add a damper to the blower. We of course would like to see one, but if you are aware of the behaviour without the damper, you can get very good results with a home made shield or damper as we have shown.

That said, the Flame Boss controllers do a fantastic job of controlling a large Big Green Egg, hitting the targets within 3°F or less as measured by our test equipment and maintaining the targets within ±1.5°F or less:

Target  Accuracy   Swing  Low +0.5° F ±1.5° F Medium -2.0° F ±0.0° F High -3.0° F ±1.0° F

Flame Boss Temperature Control Results

A few things we'll point out about using the Flame Boss controllers:

• A frequently asked question about temperature controllers is whether or not you should leave the adapter installed all the time and if so, how do you control air flow when you aren't using the unit. The door adapter pops in and out and there is really no reason to leave the adapter installed. Just insert the adapter when you want to use the controller and then remove it when you are done.

• Placement of the pit probe can be important. You want it located near the meat so that the controller is controlling the temperature at the location of the meat, not somewhere else. However, the probe must not touch the meat and should be at least an inch or two from the meat. If the meat influences the temperature of the probe (especially when the meat is first placed in the cooker and is cold), obviously the controller will be sensing a false pit temperature and will therefore compensate to the detriment of the desired results.

• If you wonder if the 6.5 CFM blower is up to the task of controlling larger cookers, well, it is. We have used 5 CFM blowers without trouble, so the Flame Boss blower is indeed up to the task.

Summary

The Flame Boss controllers are extremely good at controlling the temperature of your cooker. And the 200 Wifi model makes monitoring and controlling your cooker from a laptop, desktop or smart phone insanely easy. If you are looking for simple Wifi/remote monitoring along with great control, the Flame Boss 200 Wifi should absolutely be on your short list. Like we said, you should be aware of the blower limitations, but we won't let that deter us from recommending these controllers. If you find the Flame Boss features and price attractive, We think you will be totally satisfied with either model.

Contact Information

Flame Boss
325 S McGee Avenue
Suite 102
Apopka, Florida 32703

800-978-9078
407-442-2771

www.flameboss.com