Greetings All
I've got a new YS1500 headed my way soon and was wondering about the smoke stack. On my Frontiersman I leave the smoke stack damper completely open. Is this the same procedure for a pellet cooker or is it an actual temperature controlling device? My YS640 does not have a damper on it, it it pretty much fire and forget.
Thanks for the Help!!
Brent
Snoring Hogs BBQ
Take a look at this: viewtopic.php?p=4035#p4035
The YS1500 chimney damper functions just as any of the Yoder Smokers wood pits does, but, never close the YS1500 damper more than 50%, as you risk snuffing out the fire and potential hopper burn back.
Thanks Herb! Good Info!
Okay, received the YS1500 yesterday. It looks great!!! We all gathered around to do the initial break in and stood back in awe as it worked it's magic. I'm amazed that it comes to temp so fast.
Anyway, here is my question Herb, I loaded it down inside with oven thermometers and two hours later we have decided that the set point differs by 50º. We got it dialed in to have a grate temp of 250º with the controller set to 300º. Does this sound about right? We let her burn for about 4 hours total. I goofed with the smoke stack some as well but did not see a drastic change to the temps to warrant continued changes. I never did open the plate on the bottom.
The thing that amazed us was that reading the oven therm's from the left to the right we got readings, 258º-255º-250º-248º-245º. The top grate was essentially the same. Absolutely amazing!
I'm throwing a couple of pork butts and a few briskets on tomorrow in preparation for the next comp. The oven thermometers will remain so we can continue to check as well as the digital probes we will put in. I'll update later in the weekend with the details.
Thanks!!
Evening, I finished the butts and briskets and they turned out as expected. GREAT! The cooker is still running perfectly. It has about a 10º swing from left to right with the left being hotter as expected. The controller is still off by an extreme amount. I wound up running it at 325º to maintain between 230º-250º at the main grate. I had the exhaust closed about 30-40 percent. The plate above the burn pot was closed completely.
I'm gonna tear her down tomorrow and clean it out. When I do, I'll examine everything for a problem. This seems to be quite a difference.
Let me know if you'd like me to try anything.
Thanks
Take pictures of the ash in the burn grate and the ash plume in the bottom of the cooker before cleaning and send them to [email protected], along with the serial number and build date, the brand and flavor of pellets and your name, shipping address and phone number.
Argh, I've already cleaned her out. I will be doing another long cook tonight though. I'll use the 1500 instead of the 640. Then send the pictures tomorrow.
Thanks
Got the email turned into Customer Support Herb. It may come as two emails, the first took too long due to the pics, so I put a link in the second email to the pics instead of attaching them. Thanks for the help.
Not a problem, Yoder folks have been great to me. By the way, I forgot to mention, I did check the function of the fans and they were both working fine.
I've had some temp swing from left to right on mine as well. I've re sealed the firebox where I thought it should be better sealed and I'm going to try switching to some different brand of pellets. I got an initial 'do these things' from Yoder and will be reporting back those findings.
Regardless of how I think the smoker should perform, both times I've used it the food has been out of this world. I never really liked looking at gauges anyway. I got thin blue smoking coming out of the stack like I've never seen on any other pellet smoker and I'm pleased.
Sorta along the home brew motto. Relax, don't worry, have some BBQ.