Temperature controllers / blowers / stokers

[KamadoSimon]

Hi all,

Waiting on my Maverick to arrived, and whilst I do, have been investigating next month's cookery toy

I am planning to put together a kit for sous vide cooking - I want to try cooking steak in the water bath & then searing on the BBQ. But whilst researching this, I came across this company's site: http://www.auberins.com, and as well as sous vide kits, they also have blower set ups for different BBQ brands which I thought might be interesting for peeps on here.

Whilst they have sub-$150 blower-only kits, for me they recommended the multi-purpose controller which is one controller that can be used both a sous vide controller as well as pit blower. Total cost to import is going to be around £250. Add to that a AC to 12v adapter (a few pounds on ebay) & a rice cooker (£20-30) and you have a pretty versatile little kit.

The nice feature on the more expensive controller, is that the blurb says it has a '6 steps programmable temperature setting for cooking that needs to be started at one temperature and finished at another'. In other words, great for longer cooks, ribs etc

Anyone dealt with them / used their products?

Cheers,

Simon

[JEC]

Hi all,

Waiting on my Maverick to arrived, and whilst I do, have been investigating next month's cookery toy

I am planning to put together a kit for sous vide cooking - I want to try cooking steak in the water bath & then searing on the BBQ. But whilst researching this, I came across this company's site: http://www.auberins.com, and as well as sous vide kits, they also have blower set ups for different BBQ brands which I thought might be interesting for peeps on here.

Whilst they have sub-$150 blower-only kits, for me they recommended the multi-purpose controller which is one controller that can be used both a sous vide controller as well as pit blower. Total cost to import is going to be around £250. Add to that a AC to 12v adapter (a few pounds on ebay) & a rice cooker (£20-30) and you have a pretty versatile little kit.

The nice feature on the more expensive controller, is that the blurb says it has a '6 steps programmable temperature setting for cooking that needs to be started at one temperature and finished at another'. In other words, great for longer cooks, ribs etc

Anyone dealt with them / used their products?

Cheers,

Simon

Damn it I wasn't going to spend and money in May, you've just tempted me. I'm sat in an aiport right now about to head off to the US, might get one delivered to my hotel

[JEC]

Actually looking in a lot more detail it may work out quite expensive by the time you have found/bought a blower to go with it, guess I might have to extract my finger and build my own SV controller and use the iQue 110 that I already have

[Swindon_Ed]

I've not delt with or heard of anyone using a auberins pit controllers, but i do use a stoker and have used it on both Primo XL and Monolith ceramic cookers now and i just recived a BBQ guru as part of my prize from the weekend.

For the price it would be cheaper and possably better to get a BBQ guru, i posted in another thread about the PartyQ they do, and there are more people using them with ceramic cookers.

I just need to order a fan and the adapters for my BBQ guru and i'll be ready to test it out and can let you know how i get on with it.

[Steve]

The PIDs Auber use are the same as the ones you can get from eBay for a tenth of the price. Even if you download the manuals from the Auber website, you see they are the same dodgy Chinese-English translated docs as I have for the PIDs I've bought.

I can confirm these units work very well indeed. You're paying for the convenience of everything being packaged up for you if you buy the Auber kit. Don't get me wrong, I'm not knocking it But if you have rudimentary practical skills you can put together something almost identical for a fraction of the cost. Plus it's fun building it yourself

P.S. Anyone who's coming to MiM is welcome to check out my controller and my new gen2 controller. I'm also going to be building one for Scott on-site so you'll be able to see just how easy it is.

[philnewts]

Very interested in seeing how you build them Steve, my team mate is a tinkerer so would be great to get an overview

[keith157]

You mentioned a conversion/adaptation of a slow cooker to a sous vide bath in an earlier post any update on that. I know you're just sitting idle at the moment, it's not as if you have anything planned is it

[Steve]

Keith that project was done ages ago however the PID controller unit is currently hanging out of the front of my Traeger rather than in the water bath controller

The water bath is easier to make than the pit controller as you don't have to deal with 240VAC and 12VDC in the same box. It took me 30mins to cut the holes I needed in the project box, 15 mins to wire up (with no soldering required) and 20 mins to do the final setup.

I'll put a thread together on the sous vide at some point, but I have got a lot on right now.

[keith157]

No rush Steve, see you next month

[KamadoSimon]

Continuing my research on this, I came across this china-based ebay seller:

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/140654979876? ... 1423.l2649

I then found a good thread on this forum from some USA-based people who bought one (http://www.bbq-brethren.com/forum/showt ... p?t=123922). Seems like it works well, except the wifi component. Having read through the 11 pages of discussion, a new version of the software is in the offering some time soon which should fix the wifi issues.

If it works, this would be a cheap alternative to a Stoker, if you need / want the wifi capability & don't want to go down the complete DIY route.

Personally I am keeping an eye on this one & also the BBQ Guru wifi version which someone posted about here: viewtopic.php?f=30&t=1998