Pro tip: stop trusting the lid thermometer on your offset, mine was off by 75 degrees at the grate

Thomas Torres · 2026-10-11T11:15:05.692354+00:00

Cooked two racks of spares on my Old Country Brazos down here in Waco this past Saturday and could not figure out why they came off dry at the 3 hour mark when the lid gauge read 250 the whole time. My buddy who runs a food truck finally brought over his ThermoWorks Smoke and clipped the probe at grate level, and it was sitting at 325. The lid thermometer on that thing reads the air up top, not where the meat actually sits, and I had been cooking every brisket 50 degrees hotter than I thought for almost two years. What got me was how steady it looked the whole time, so I never questioned it, I just kept wrapping earlier and earlier and blaming the meat. Now I run one probe at grate level next to the brisket and honestly it changed how I manage my fire more than any new rub ever did. If you have a stick burner with a factory gauge in the lid, do yourself a favor and check it against a real probe before your next cook. Has your lid gauge ever been that far off, or did I just get a bad one?

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Pro tip: stop trusting the lid thermometer on your offset, mine was off by 75 degrees at the grate | BBQ Pitmasters - Thought Shares