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Not happy with my pellet grill

KarlVP

Not Sure
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May 19, 2020
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381
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1,364
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Crusty's Brewing, Wa
My neighbor gave me a louisiana pellet grill (900 model) when he moved away.

It was broken and I cleaned and painted it, got a new control board, some pellets and let her chooch.

I'm really not impressed with it. It seems to cook too hot. Even when I run it super low (180 or 225) it still cooks too hot.

I've been running traeger competition pellets in it and they burn well but I'm not liking what comes off of it.

So far I've cooked.

Pork ribs = meh

Beef ribs = jerky

Chicken = outstanding

Bratwurst = better on a propane grill

Twice baked potatoes = phenomenal

I'm not new to the smoking meats game. I have a Pit Barrel that I can turn out some amazing food on. I also had a super cheap ass walmart stick burner that I could make great BBQ on.

What the fuck am I doing wrong with an expensive pellet smoker?
 
My folks had a Traeger for about a year. They went back to a more traditional gas grill with a rotisserie burner.
 
My neighbor gave me a louisiana pellet grill (900 model) when he moved away.

It was broken and I cleaned and painted it, got a new control board, some pellets and let her chooch.

I'm really not impressed with it. It seems to cook too hot. Even when I run it super low (180 or 225) it still cooks too hot.

I've been running traeger competition pellets in it and they burn well but I'm not liking what comes off of it.

So far I've cooked.

Pork ribs = meh

Beef ribs = jerky

Chicken = outstanding

Bratwurst = better on a propane grill

Twice baked potatoes = phenomenal

I'm not new to the smoking meats game. I have a Pit Barrel that I can turn out some amazing food on. I also had a super cheap ass walmart stick burner that I could make great BBQ on.

What the fuck am I doing wrong with an expensive pellet smoker?
How old is the Louisiana grill? Does the controller have like 7 or 8 temp settings only? If it does, it’s likely NOT a PID controller. As in, it may monitor the temp, but it doesn’t react to that info. It’s dumb as hell. My old traeger was like this. See if you can order a PID controller.
 
I've got a gas grill, big green egg and traeger. I had some bad cooks on the egg because the temp manipulation vent door voodoo is way over my head but honestly everything I cook on the traeger is awesome. Like OHV said it sounds like your temp control isn't up to par, low and slow is the way with the pellet grills IMO.
 
The thermostat on the traeger I have used has a wide temperature range for each setting. It does some things ok, but I prefer and actual fire.
 
How old is the Louisiana grill? Does the controller have like 7 or 8 temp settings only? If it does, it’s likely NOT a PID controller. As in, it may monitor the temp, but it doesn’t react to that info. It’s dumb as hell. My old traeger was like this. See if you can order a PID controller.
I think 2 or 3 years old. The temp control is digital. When I called about a replacement control board, they stated there was a problem with the one I had and shipped me a "G4" version. It's controllable to the 5 degree mark.
 
I think 2 or 3 years old. The temp control is digital. When I called about a replacement control board, they stated there was a problem with the one I had and shipped me a "G4" version. It's controllable to the 5 degree mark.
Dang, I don't know what to think, then. Most of the time the reactive controllers like what you probably just got fix all the temp woes. I would probably call them again. And, where are you getting your more accurate temp reading from? As in, a second digital thermometer? And what happens if you set the thing lower? I would think it would really struggle to stay lit at the 175 mark or so, but if it's really running hotter than that, you might be able to set it that low and keep a fire going.
 
Get a digital thermometer and see what the actual temp is inside the thing. If it's running hot it could be that the controller temp sensor is bad or something needs to be calibrated. Also helps to know what the actual temp of the meat is as it's cooking.
 
Bump

I'm considering dropping a big chunk of cash on a pellet smoker. I currently have a big green egg, but really only use it to smoke a pork butt once a month or so. Its not easy to use very often as it takes a while to get it to the proper temp and keep it there. Its not something I can have ready in 15- 20 minutes just to cook a couple burgers or sear a Ribeye.

A couple friends have the Yoder 640s and swear by it. Anyone else here have one? It seems to be built way better than most others. I cant find a single bad review anywhere. But is it worth $2500?....
 

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I bought a used Traeger with a new controller and it also cooks 50 degrees hotter than the readout says.

Get a probe and a IR heat gun and you’ll figure it out.

Bacon is amazing on it.
 
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If you’re dropping 2500 look at smokin brothers smokers they’re high quality machines . I used the cheapest pitboss you can buy almost daily sometimes multiple times daily for 4-5 years sometimes the tiny thing feeding dozens of people and it never skipped a beat so they got mine and all my friends business when it came time to upgrade .
 
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I have a Yoder and love it. And they’ve been excellent to deal with for parts (I’ve had mine for 10 years). If I were buying new, I’d look hard at the new Pit Boss units in the vertical layout, though. I have zero experience with them. But I think it would be easier to put a pile of food in, it holds a ton of pellets, and takes up less room on the porch. Plus they’re like $600 for the top option one, I think.
 
OHV the only reason I didn’t go vertical was the lack of grilling ability
 
OHV the only reason I didn’t go vertical was the lack of grilling ability
The ability to grill and get to high temps was one of the things that sold me on my Yoder at the time. I don't find myself using it to actually grill, though. I mean, that thing will get to 700 degrees, which is awesome for a pizza or whatever. But the issue is that it spends 95% of its life at 225 degrees. So, the inside of the smoker is covered in a layer of rendered fat. When you decide you want to cook a pizza, you need to set it to max and let it burn off that fat for a solid hour before you can ever put food in it.

So, all my high temp stuff ends up getting done on a charcoal grill or the griddle. I'm not sold on the all-in-one type thinking. We used to go to the trouble to pull the drip pan out of it so we could use the grill-grate things on the fire side. It makes a great steak. But I can make one just as good with way less effort by doing a reverse sear, using the pellet grill as the low temp side, and the gas cooktop in the house as the high-temp side.

To each their own. But I would caution new buyers not to let the ability to grill really sway them. Of course, I'm the guy talking about how a vertical smoker would save porch space, but I have a horizontal smoker, a charcoal grill, and a Blackstone taking up half my porch. :homer:
 
I use a 4 probe external thermometer, my GMG holds the middle range fairly accurately per the grill mounted probe, but the lower ranges for smoking its pretty inaccurate. When i smoke ribs at 225, I have to set the controller to like 205-210 to get it to stay, ymmv.
 

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Fawk it. I placed my order at atbbq.com for aYoder 640S with the additional kit that comes with a cover, half grate, SS steel racks, sear plates. cast iron griddle, hickory pellets and a bunch of rubs. For $3275 this thing should probably suck my dick, but maybe if I smoke a tasty brisket, I'll get a blowjob from my wife :/
 
Fawk it. I placed my order at atbbq.com for aYoder 640S with the additional kit that comes with a cover, half grate, SS steel racks, sear plates. cast iron griddle, hickory pellets and a bunch of rubs. For $3275 this thing should probably suck my dick, but maybe if I smoke a tasty brisket, I'll get a blowjob from my wife :/
$3200, there are cheaper options :lmao:
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So much to say here…. We had a green mountain grill that worked awesome, as long as you had time to cook (hours). After we had our first kid and needed to actually grill chicken or steaks in 20-30 minutes, we started having problems. I added a gas grill to the fleet and life was good.

Post-fire I started with a quality gas grill and a gas smoker (because our power company was hit or miss). This combo worked well for 18 months and then the gas smoker started to produce a bunch of creosote that coated the meet. This year I sidelined it and added an electric “fridge” style smoker. It smokes awesome, but taps out around 280 degrees, so not enough to “finish” most larger cuts or select meals. So, I have to bounce back and forth.

This has led me to look at pellet grills again, to bridge this gap again, but as someone else mentioned, I will end up with a pile of grilling, smoking, cooking appliances on my deck.
 
I have a pitboss pellet grill that I'm very happy with. I use it at least once a week and I've never had an issue over the past 5ish years
 
Lil late but maybe helpful to someone else.
Pellet smokers can have large temperature gradients across cooking surface.
I have a GMG with movable deflector box, which has huge impact on temp and gradient. Like 50+ degrees across surface. I modified to be able to move the deflector while in use, so I can tune it. I mapped the temps at right/center/left for a given deflector position and figured out what gives minimum gradient.
But it is also dependent on cook temp, so the deflector position for even distribution change as set temp does. So at 225 it needs to be mostly right and at 350 more in the center position.
The controller temp sensor is on the left side so only that spot is regulated by setpoint. So it is also highly affected by deflector position . If is cold and windy set point may need to be increased 25 to get cooking surface to target.

If outcome of meat is dependent on accurate temp, verify what it is where meat is. or even empty in multiple places on cook surface.

I also have charcoal and gas grill. they all have there ups and downs.
 
Lil late but maybe helpful to someone else.
Pellet smokers can have large temperature gradients across cooking surface.
Rattle summed it up pretty well. My homemade ugly drum smoker was phenomenal once I learned out to manage it. It was an event to setup and get going, once I did it would run solid 12-15hrs if needed. But just tossing something on wasn't a thing.

GMG is awesome, but still requires some knowledge, tinkering to get dialed. I don't use the app, but you can set up profiles for each recipe to manage cook times/ temps/ keep it warm, etc. So just toss on the meat, hit the "pulled pork" profile and go.
 
Cooking noob here.

I have a low end Z Grill that my son mostly uses but I cooked some chickens on it for the NOT super bowl party.

I got a Meater+ probe from my MIL for Xmas and it basically made the temp management process almost foolproof, I didn't realize the pit temp would cool so fast so I did end up almost fucking it up 😆.

Anyway with the temp dial on 275 I finally got a avg cook temp of 225.

Sorry for cool story bro:lmao:
Check it out.
 
I have a cheap Pit Boss and it’s been great for us. One thing I’ve learned is the temperature probe/sensors get covered with soot or whatever and that’s when you get differing temp readings vs reality. I got in the habit of cleaning the sensors every time before I fire up the grill and it’s worked flawlessly. I doubt I’ll ever go back to a gas grill.
 
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