The BBQ Guru

General information

The BBQ Guru™ is manufactured by Therm-Omega-Tech, Inc., an industry leader in industrial temperature control. TOT was founded in 1982 by Shotgun Fred Pirkle. Over the course of 21 years, Fred has patented 18 products and has 5 patent pending products. We consider ourselves specialty manufacturers and have extensive research & development capabilities that include the latest in temperature measurement, control instrumentation, and testing facilities.

At our factory in Warminster, Pennsylvania, we develop and manufacture control devices for fuel cells, medical equipment, the process industry and personal cooling apparel for hospital operating rooms and other high heat situations.

While in the midst of maturing our EMPC (Electronically Modulated Position Control) project, we realized that the circuitry of this control resembled what would be needed to control a charcoal fire. By this time, the Pitminder™ (an all mechanical smoker control) had already been built and tested in our facilities and we came to the conclusion that an electronic microprocessor based control would be versatile enough to provide temperature control for everything from “low & slow” barbequing to jerky making, pepper drying and cold smoking.

The thought of manufacturing a BBQ device that could work like a crockpot (slow cooker) was just too tempting.