Dirty smoke?

[pressure_welder]

Good day! so about 3 weeks ago my wife purchased me a 780 Pro for my birthday, ive been wanting a traeger for quite a while just simply for ease of use and i think the wifire app is absolutely awesome. I am used to stick burner reverse flow smokers, but i must say the traegers ease of use is worth its weight in gold. So far its been running every weekend since april 20th, many sets of ribs, did up 25 lbs of deer summer sausage, pork loin, and 10lbs of deer jerky all with excellent results.

So question! yesterday i was doing up ribs for my wife on mothers day, ive been doing the 180* for 3 hrs, wrap for 2, and then a final at 220 for 1 hr with great results. But yesterday i encountered an issue i believe at 180* It was a repeating consistent issue. So i would go for 5 maybe 10 minutes with clean smoke, and then it was as if the auger overfilled the fire pot or i lost flame or something as i would then get a flash of dirty smoke for 2-3 min as if it was re-igniting and then it would revert back to clean smoke. Temperatures stayed consistent during this fluctuation of smoke. The smoker was completely cleaned before this use as well. For fear of ruining supper, i shut everything down and re-cleaned, and swapped out my pellets for brand new pellets for fear that maybe mine took on some moisture but after all that messing around, still the fluctuation. I decided to bump the temps upto 250* for the remainder of the cook to see if this would alleviate the issue and it did. took it upto 350 for a final crisp and tigthen up the ribs, luckily they still turned out fantastic but i dont like dirty smoke! bad news on the stick burners, can ruin food quite quickly.

Ive never noticed this issue before, especially two weekends ago when i did summer sausage which was 160* for almost 10 hrs, the traeger maintained clean smoke throughout the process. Just curious as to what i might be missing? My pellets sure dont look moist.

 

[RayClem]

The lower the grill temp, the greater the chance of getting dirty smoke. Also, do you know the actual temperature of your grill. The Traeger RTD thermocouple is not always representative of the cook temperature. For example, If I set my controler to 220F, the thermocouple reads 220F, but the actual cook temp is closer to 200F. If you are setting the controller to 180F, the actual temp might be even lower.

The controller is programmed to allow the temperature to swing up and down around the set point. Since you are accustomed to offset smokers, you know that you always get some temperature fluctuation. Traeger does not try to hold an exact temperature.

You indicate you are in Brandon, but I do not know if that is Brandon, MS, FL, SD or Manitoba. The ambient temperature can vary greatly depending upon location. In the summer with the sun shining on my Ironwood, the temperature can get up to 150F before I ever ignite the grill.. If you are trying to maintain a temperature of 180F under those conditions, the controller is going to have difficulty as it won't take a lot of pellets. If you start to see dirty smoke, bump the controller up 5-10 degrees and see if that helps. I am not accustomed to the level of smoke produced by a stick burner, so I normally start my cooks at 220F actual.

 

[pressure_welder]

manitoba here!

and good points..... this was the first weekend that i was smoking when the ambient temperature was around +20-25* whereas the previous weekends were around 5 - 10*. so a fair increase in ambient temperature outside.... didnt check but i imagine the smoker itself was quite warm sitting in the sun before things even got rolling. So this would use less pellets.

With the offsets other than adding fuel correctly, it was quite easy to throttle the machine when warm via the vents, about the only time i encountered dirty smoke was when not using well seasoned wood, or of course on startup. But yes you certainly get that minor swing when you add fuel, and come back to idle.

So with " i believe " the only factor changing is the ambient temperature. Being no dirty smoke with colder ambient temperatures at 160-180* on the controller. I wonder what was causing this repeated clean smoke/dirty smoke battle with itself. Saw dust maybe? Other than that it makes no sense should be able to purr along at 160-180 like it did when colder outside.

But you are correct, the problem alleviated itself when i bumped the temp up to 220 i think it was. Again, not like thats a high or fast temp to cook at. Rather than the 180 that most of the recipes seem to call for, potentially using 200* as a baseline may be advantageous to avoid dirty smoke.

 

[brisket]

I have run into the same problem when trying to smoke jerky, bacon, or other goodies at a minimum temperature. As PW said, this is easier in a cold ambient than in warmer weather.

Experimenting with different pellet types can be helpful here as well. I find oak to give the cleanest low temp smoke. Mix in flavor wood but go light.

Measure your actual grill temperature with a reliable thermometer. Traeger grill RTD probes are notoriously inaccurate and, unlike the meat probe, cannot be calibrated. That is too bad, because the grill RTD behaves linearly, just with ever-increasing offsets as setpoints go higher.

My Silverton maintains a reasonably consistent grill temperature except towards the edges. Figure within +/- 5F of setpoint. Setpoint of 235 on my grill is closest to 220 actual. YMMV.

Actual grill temperatures vs. Traeger values I measured:

Probe  Actual
 160    150
 175    164
 200    187
 225    210
 235    219

 

[Shedd]

I highly doubt that the dirty or good blue smoke will affect the flavor one way or another. I’ve found that pellets do not infuse the smoke flavors anywhere near that of a stick burner unless you add smoke tubes with wood chips and chunks. Plus the design of a pellet grill pushes the smoke out way too fast for it to really stick to meat. I absolutely hated my 780 at first but I kept working with it and I’ve got it to working like a smoker instead of just a grill.

 

[Slimpicker]

Probably 50 times more likely to have dirty smoke from all our old coal/wood burners than from anything in a Traeger... THE END.

I highly doubt that the dirty or good blue smoke will affect the flavor one way or another. I’ve found that pellets do not infuse the smoke flavors anywhere near that of a stick burner unless you add smoke tubes with wood chips and chunks. Plus the design of a pellet grill pushes the smoke out way too fast for it to really stick to meat.

AGREED 100%