Yoder Smokers Community Forum

You can tell I'm a noob when it comes to the pellet cookers. I checked my meat, looked in the hopper, thought "I have enough", and about an hour later and saw way low temps. checked and saw it ran dry! Took the meat off and into the oven it went. Got her retired and then put on some sausages!

Lesson learned.

So far everything has turned out great. Working on getting more smoke into the meat, as the chicken on my inaugural cook wasn't smokey at all. Beef ribs on Memorial day had a stunning smoke ring and were excellent. Tried the low heat method to get more smoke, then after about 2 hours upped the temp.
Been learning damper, and testing the setting against actual grate, which is interesting. I expect its going to take me a while to find the sweet spot with even temperatures. Center grate is often times 25 degrees lower than the actual setting on the digital. So I've been playing with the damper getting a feel to how its containing the flow.
Which leads me to the Pellet.

Trying to find quality pellets is a pain. Using "Gourmet BBQ Pellets", but reading about bbqers delight and Lumberjacks which are supposed to be fantastic. But impossible to find locally, with our driving an hour or so. So that is going to take time. we shall see.

So much to learn!

Look for Q pellets. They are Lumberjack. There are a few brands out there, try some Googling. Depends where you live and if there is a place nearby. I got lucky, 5 min from my place is a wood place that sells pellets.

Ignore the dial thermometers. Trust the digital system. You will be glad you did.