Have I ruined my Salmon?

[TheBoz]

I'm in the middle of a salmon smoke, its not going well.  8 hours in and the internal temp is only 118 deg.  I've noticed my auber temps are 30 deg lower than the door thermometer.  The internal temps are matching the door.  I thought I was cooking at 110 for two hours, 140 for 3 hours, and 180 for 2 but my temps are running 30 deg low.  At this point I wonder if the meat has spoiled because my true temps are 2 hours at 80deg, 3 hours at 110, and 2 hours at 140.  Is is rotten by now?

[Quarlow]

Well I am not going to say it is or isn't, but when I was a kid my dad built a plywood smoker and when we smoked fish it was an all day affair. I am talking about 14 hours. So I would have to say you have to judge it for your self but our fish took along time to smoke and we never died from it. You have to make the call. It would be ashame to have to toss it but then again it would suck to get sick from it and salmonelle poisoning is no fun at all if you live. You know what they say, when in doubt thorw it out. Did you figure out what the problem was, was your element not putting out or did you set the PID wrong or did you get false readings from your thermo's.

[bilder]

My average time for smoking salmon is 12 hours, but I do not have a Bradley yet, just an old totem smoker.

Did you put enough salt into the brine? That should keep the nasty critters at bay during the smoking process.

[TheBoz]

finally finished it @ 10 hours.  I had to keep turning up the heat until I got 160 internal temp.  At then end, the auber probe was under the lowest tray (second from top), it was reading 210, door thermometer was only 180.  The meat turned out very tasty!  1/3 was over cooked but still tasted good.  I bagged it and froze it this morning to help stack the deck for not getting sick.  So far so good.  The bottom line is I just need more experience with the OBS and the Auber.  I'm not trusting my data, I need to put some time in and experiment with thermometers to understand what it's telling me.  I do think my temps were low, the meat internal temps reflected it, they would not go up until I cranked up on the heat.  For step two - three hours at 140 and the meat was only 109.  No surprise my door thermometer read 110.  I was not getting good data.

[Quarlow]

OK I have only use my PID once and it wasn't for salmon so this info needs to be interpreted to PID use. When I do salmon I preheat the cabinet to as hot as I can get it while I am prepping the fish. I put my control on full bore. Then when the fish goes in I leave the control on high till the cab temp comes up to 140f. I use a probe thermo under the lowest rack suspended by paperclips hanging from the rack. I keep the fish on the top racks(of course I do large amounts and fill all the racks so the temp probe is on the bottom rack). Then at 140f I hit the smoke(you have to decide how much smoke you want) and without a PID I spend probably an hours getting the temp to stay where I want it. Then from there you just step the temps accordingly. Now don't forget to rotate the racks. You can't just leave them in there and expect it to come out good. You need to rotate front to back and top to bottom. What I do is is take the top rack and move it to the bottom, turn it front to back and then the rest move up to the next rung and they get rotated. I do this every 1 1/2 hrs to 2 hrs. I know it slows the cook process down but I would rather spend a few extra hrs to get the fish to how I like it than to not rotate enough and have overcooked fish. It still comes out awesome and no one ever complains about my smoked salmon.