TxDuster
New member
So, I’ve been using my pellet grill without issue for over 2 years now. This week (Fourth of July) I’ve done a good bit of cooking. I bought two bags of apple pellets from a local hardware store. Cleaned the grill before I started the week out and cooked some ribs with the apple. I used some other pellets (the turkey pellets I had in the garage) for the chickens and then started a couple of butts this morning.
I cleaned the grill, vacuumed and changed the drip pan foil before starting this morning. About 5 hours in, I noticed some smoke in the pellet hopper. I also noticed very little smoke from the stack this is not normal running at 225 deg. I shut the grill down. Moved the meat to my gas grill to keep it going and broke the Traeger down. I found the pot FULL of ash and chunks of small clinkers. They were small and easily broken but the ash was pellet shaped and not thoroughly burned. I cleaned the hopper out and ran the pellets out of the tube. I got the grill going again and about 3 hours in this time, it was worse. Smoke POURING out of the hopper and no smoke from the stack. I repeated the process above and found the same issue Photos below.
This time I switched over to Signature pellets to finish the cook. I blew my best shot at good smoke in the butts anyway so….. It seems to be running fine on these but I really hate to throw out the apple.
Could this just be a bad bag? Could this be an OLD bag (I bought two so I may have to throw the other away if old Is a problem)? I did some internet derived testing such as looking at the appearance of the pellet…nice and shiny. I dumped some in water and they sank… and the snapped well not crumbled when I attempted to break them. I think the condition is not an issue.
Is the problem running 225 for a long time???? Is the problem just an issue of an anomaly? Is fruit especially bad for this? As I mentioned… Everything seems to be running fine at the moment finishing this cook.
Looking to not have this happen again if possible.
DSF
I cleaned the grill, vacuumed and changed the drip pan foil before starting this morning. About 5 hours in, I noticed some smoke in the pellet hopper. I also noticed very little smoke from the stack this is not normal running at 225 deg. I shut the grill down. Moved the meat to my gas grill to keep it going and broke the Traeger down. I found the pot FULL of ash and chunks of small clinkers. They were small and easily broken but the ash was pellet shaped and not thoroughly burned. I cleaned the hopper out and ran the pellets out of the tube. I got the grill going again and about 3 hours in this time, it was worse. Smoke POURING out of the hopper and no smoke from the stack. I repeated the process above and found the same issue Photos below.
This time I switched over to Signature pellets to finish the cook. I blew my best shot at good smoke in the butts anyway so….. It seems to be running fine on these but I really hate to throw out the apple.
Could this just be a bad bag? Could this be an OLD bag (I bought two so I may have to throw the other away if old Is a problem)? I did some internet derived testing such as looking at the appearance of the pellet…nice and shiny. I dumped some in water and they sank… and the snapped well not crumbled when I attempted to break them. I think the condition is not an issue.
Is the problem running 225 for a long time???? Is the problem just an issue of an anomaly? Is fruit especially bad for this? As I mentioned… Everything seems to be running fine at the moment finishing this cook.
Looking to not have this happen again if possible.
DSF