New to wood stoves - what am I missing?

As I stated in an earlier post, we took out the 30 degree offsets on Saturday and went straight up through the eaves, and continued the flue a total of 7 feet above the roof level. It is a total of 22 feet now, with four feet of stove pipe inside and 18 feet of Supervent outside. Previously, it had the 30 degree offsets and only went 3 feet above the roof line.

Could this change in the flue height and geometry cause the single wall stove pipe to heat up faster and hotter on start up from a cold stove? We didn't burn the stove since Sunday, and when I started it up tonight, I got concerned because something smelled too hot, similar to the first time we fired the stove, breaking in the stove pipe.

Then I realized the flue was heating up much faster/hotter than before we altered the chimney. The surface thermometer on the stove pipe went up to 550 then dropped when I engaged the cat and decreased the draft, but that's hotter than it was running in the past (it never went over 450 before). I did move the stove pipe thermometer down to about 14 inches above the stove top. Before it was about 20 inches above stove top level.

I'm assuming its just drawing that much better and heating everything up faster? Stove pipe temp in general is now running about 50 degrees hotter than before, but again I don't know if that's because of changing the chimney or moving the thermometer down 6 inches.