Cannot keep my A-Maze-mn 5X8 lit..

[mikedaub]

did you clean your amnps sometimes the air holes get clogged up, I have a mes 30 also, had same problems your having, tried everything could never get it to burn all the way, some people on here have no problems, I know you don't want to go the mailbox route but that was the best thing I did.

A couple of the holes on the bottom are clogged, without a doubt. I would think its from drippings getting into the ash.. I wouldn't think that the small amount would cause issues, but something to give a shot..

 

[mikedaub]

Switch to dust. All you will lose is about 2 hrs on a full load compared to pellets.

I have a bunch of dust.. I could certainly give it a try.. Can't hurt really since I am not getting a full burn with the pellets

 

[mikedaub]

I had to do a lot of fiddling before I figured out how to get my AMNPS and my MES to get along. This is what I do:

I load up the AMNPS with 15 oz. of pellets and stick it in the oven at 300F while I'm getting the smoker ready. It usually spends 20-30 minutes in there. Then I pull it out and light one end on fire. I set a timer for ten minutes. If it starts smoldering before ten minutes is up, I relight it. I leave a 1" gap in the chip tray and the loader. Last, but not least, I use a chimney. This is the only way I could maintain a draft in the MES. You can buy one, or you can stick a couple soup cans together.

I still haven't done the mailbox mod, which really seems to be the ultimate fix, but this method has worked for me for several years.

Do you attached the chimney to the smoker at all, or just kinda sit them there? I can give that a shot. Plenty of soup can things around the house to make one out of..

I did essentially the same as you.. pellets in stove for 20ish minutes, and pulled the loader out about 3ish inches..

It must just be this silly Maine winter/spring we are having. Nothing is working right for me since we still have all this snow on the ground..

 

[Bearcarver]

Once the coals started to burn, they weren't super tight in the 5x8 anymore, as they spread out a bit. I pushed all the ash/coals towards the hole in the end just so I could pack more pellets in there for more smoke.

I will take a picture later, but no, my chip loader only will go in the hole one way. It will make sense once I add some images tonight..

I like the pan covering.. that might help..

OK, If you can't turn it, it's still good to pull the dumper out about 3".

And although I forget to mention what Jim did, it can be a big deal when the perforations get clogged up with carbon. I use a stiff paint brush inside & out.

And I don't know where you reside, but if you use tin cans for a vent chimney, don't use one that fits real close, because condensation will form & can drip back through the vent hole & drip on your food, especially when it's "Northern" Cold Out. Those drips can be Yucky!!!

Bear

 

[phil brown]

Do you attached the chimney to the smoker at all, or just kinda sit them there?

Mine has a slight recess around the damper, so I wedge a pipe in there. It's not quite airtight, but it does the job. The taller the better, BTW.

 

[fivetricks]

3" dryer hose connection piece with a touch of foil wrapped around it fits perfectly in the exhaust port of the mes.

I removed (unscrewed) the damper from my exhaust and moved it to my mailbox door on one. I took a saw and cut out the damper on the other and replaced both with the dryer hose connections. They both draft great.

I also have a piece of spare 4" PVC pipe about 2.5 feet long I keep around for the UDS when winds are expecially calm. Adjusting chimney length in some will do great things for your drafting.

 

[mikedaub]

Sorry all.. I was away from the net for a while with a very pregnant wife, so that has kept me busy..

Just to follow up, this is what my shoot looks like:

You can see how that "lip" won't let me turn it. But, during the burn, I did have it pulled out a solid 3=4" or so..

For my pellets, this is how they burned:

I think the one thing I need to work on it cleaning all the little holes in it. I can say there are definitely a bunch that are clogged up and maybe thats the issue..

Thanks all for the help... I will get this figured out sooner or later. And now that its a bit warmer in Maine, I hope to be smoking a whole lot more..

 

[Bearcarver]

Sorry all.. I was away from the net for a while with a very pregnant wife, so that has kept me busy..

Just to follow up, this is what my shoot looks like:


You can see how that "lip" won't let me turn it. But, during the burn, I did have it pulled out a solid 3=4" or so..

For my pellets, this is how they burned:

I think the one thing I need to work on it cleaning all the little holes in it. I can say there are definitely a bunch that are clogged up and maybe thats the issue..

Thanks all for the help... I will get this figured out sooner or later. And now that its a bit warmer in Maine, I hope to be smoking a whole lot more..

I used a stiff paint brush, but I clean my AMNPS often---Only takes about 10 seconds.
If it's bad, use a stiff brush, or you can stick it in the Dishwasher. Or if Real Bad---Try a wire brush.

If my memory serves me, one of my MES units didn't allow me to rotate the dumper, but I could remove it completely, then rotate it, then put it back in while rotated.

Bear

 

[mikedaub]

I used a stiff paint brush, but I clean my AMNPS often---Only takes about 10 seconds.
If it's bad, use a stiff brush, or you can stick it in the Dishwasher. Or if Real Bad---Try a wire brush.

If my memory serves me, one of my MES units didn't allow me to rotate the dumper, but I could remove it completely, then rotate it, then put it back in while rotated.

Bear

Thanks..I can easily take a brush to it and give it a little clean. I never even thought of that.

With my version of the MES, I am almost stuck with just pulling it out. I tried it pulling all the way out and and putting it back in, but no go. I will just keep trying with what I can, and maybe add a stack to it to help with the draw.

 

[sigmo]

As all of these posts point out: Everyone figures their own ways to get the pellets to burn.

I live at about 5300 feet above sea level. So people recommend using a tube rather than the AMNPS at this elevation.

But being a die hard, I've made the AMNPS work well for me. Here's what I do:

Dry the pellets thoroughly. I have done it in the microwave oven, and when I do that, I put them in a microwave safe bowl and give 'em 30 seconds, then take them out and stir. You can see and feel the steam coming off of them! Then I put 'em back in and give them another 30 seconds. Then take out and stir. And so forth for about five or six cycles. If you let them run for more than 30 seconds, they WILL catch on fire. And that will smoke up your microwave oven for quite some time. :)

So lately, I've been drying them in our kitchen oven. It's a convection oven, so I run it in convection mode at about 250. I put the pellets in a foil steam-table tray (I LOVE those things!) in a thin layer. A half hour or sometimes longer gets them really dry!

A while back, I weighed a batch, then dried them, then weighed them again, and the percentage by weight of moisture they had was really quite astounding. And it's very dry around here. Still, they'd obviously absorbed a lot of moisture even though they'd been in their original bags from AMAZIN. Plastic bags do not stop water vapor. They may stop blatant water and drops, but they're actually quite porous. Put a sliced onion in a ziplock bag, and tell me you can't smell it through the plastic. ;)

So anyhow, I dry them thoroughly, and if I'm not going to use them immediately, I put them in a mason jar or other glass jar that really seals well. I put them in while they're still hot so they don't absorb moisture as they cool. And again, it's DRY here!

I pre-heat the smoker to at least the temperature I'm going to be smoking at. The smoker needs to be hot already in order to draft correctly.

I remove the pellet hopper/dropper thing COMPLETELY.

I took the whole chip burner and its little drawer out and threw that all away.

I use a chimney stuffed into the vent hole that is conveniently on the top of my gen 1 MES 40. It's about a foot of 3" stove-pipe and it jams perfectly into the vent and stays there even if it's windy. Perfect fit. Bear's point about condensation running down the chimney and then getting on your food is right on. But I always have a piece of foil pan on the right side of the top shelf to direct the airflow in the smoker all of the way to the left (opposite side as the vent is on) and then the smoke has to go over to the right to escape. That pan catches any drips so they cannot fall on your food. This wastes the whole top shelf of my smoker, but that's OK.

I fill the maze up HIGH. The deeper (taller) the pellets are, the more heat is generated at the "burn front" as the pellets work their way along. That higher heat helps drive moisture out of the adjacent unburned pellets so they're dry and ready to burn when the cherry reaches them. This goes especially for the corners! To make it burn around the corners, I've got the pellets high and deep. It doesn't matter if it "jumps across" at the corners, after all.

You have to make sure the pellets are not touching between rows everywhere else to keep it from short circuiting, but I get them piled high and then nudge them away from each other where they're too close.

Looking at your photo of your maze, that's not anywhere near as deep as I pile mine. Up well over the height of the separators, just not touching or too close. Gotta experiment a bit!

I light the pellets on the left end, farthest from the air inlet. That way, as they burn further, they get closer to the air source to help them burn later on in the run after they may have absorbed moisture again.

Also, as part of my modifications removing the original chip tray and drawer, I also installed a crude aluminum deflector that forces the air coming into the hole where the chip loader used to be over to the left and down, so it's blowing directly over my pellet maze. That also keeps drips from being able to fall on the heating element. Burning drips of grease and stuff off of the food will create nasty smelling smoke.

The maze is up on the wires at the left, bottom of the smoker so that it's up well off of the floor of the smoker to help with airflow beneath it.

I always have a drip tray above the pellet maze to prevent drips from being able fall into it. Not only does that help it burn properly, but drips getting directly onto the pellets will burn and create a bitter, nasty taste to the smoke.

I light the pellets with a Mapp Gas torch, and I've actually caused at least one of the spot welds on my maze to fail from getting that whole corner cherry red. I light the pellets an inch or two into them, not just the very edge.

I let it burn for ten minutes or so, and then I use a small computer fan, held in my hand, to blow on the burning end of the pellets. This will blow the flame out, but stoke the cherry massively to the point that when I take the fan away, it re-ignites into flames again! Once it'll re-ignite like that, I let it burn for a short while to actually cool down, and then I blow it out. Sometimes that's hard to do! Sometimes I have to close the door of the smoker and let it burn that way for a few minutes and then open the door and blow out the flames.

At that point, the pellets are ready to go. And I've had no troubles with them going out since I've followed that method.

You probably won't need to do all of those things because you're at a lower elevation. But you do have much higher humidity from the sounds of it. So maybe you will need to do a lot of those things.

I don't have access to my photos here now, but I can post some shots of the setup later if anyone wants to see the mess in my MES.

 

[mikedaub]

As all of these posts point out: Everyone figures their own ways to get the pellets to burn.

I don't have access to my photos here now, but I can post some shots of the setup later if anyone wants to see the mess in my MES.

Awesome post and thanks for the info.. I did roughly the same with the cooking of the pellets, and lighting, just not to the same level. Fortunately, I really enjoy cooking/smoking, so lots of opportunity to figure it out.

If you get a chance, I'd love to see the set up on the air intake system you have. I think something over the pellets to keep from drippings coming down like Bear does, might help a bunch.

 

[dward51]

I think you have 2 issues, with #1 below being the main issue.

1) Over time the pellets have sucked some moisture out of the air. The pellets are very low moisture content when made (virtually zero). The natural tendency for humidity is to reach equilibrium, so if your ambient air is 50% and your pellets are under 10%, the pellets will slowly try to reach the 50% level. They may look the same, but for lighting it is an issue.

I do one of two things to my pellets (I live in Georgia and humidity is known to frequent about 175%, ok 100% but it seems like 175%). Before using pellets, I just assume they are too wet out of the box, even though they are stored inside the house. I either microwave them in a pyrex measuring 2 cup container for 2 minutes on high, or I will lay them out flat on a disposable foil pan and put them in the electric smoker as I pre-heat it (I use the pan for a drip pan later so it does double duty). When preheating with pellets in the smoker, I run it at 225-250 for 20 to 30 minutes. If I'm using the WSM, I'll set them in a pan on the top rack and use the BBQ Guru to keep the smoker at 225-250. My smoke temps are generally 225* anyway, and since it's always a good idea to pre-heat the smoker, I'm doing double duty with the heat in drying the pellets.

The fact that the left over pellets from the prior smoke burned fine and the "fresh" ones did not (in the same tray), supports the above theory. The moisture was driven out during the prior smoke.

2) I think from your photo you are not filling the pellet tray high enough. Combine this with moisture in the pellets and they are going out.

And, yes creosote can form on the holes in the mesh. It is a good idea to brush it with a wire brush every so often to clear it out. You can also use a propane/mapp torch to burn it off, but unless the mesh was totally closed off I don't think that alone would put the pellets out.

You also want some sort of shield above the pellets to keep drippings from hitting them. You *DO NOT* want it sitting directly on top of the tray, but somewhere above. And you do not want the tray sitting directly on top of the heating element without some sort of a shield between the tray and the element. The pellets can get too hot and the entire tray cook off at once. Basically pellets need a "Goldilocks zone" that is just right...

I think moisture is your main issue though.

 

[mikedaub]

I think moisture is your main issue though.

Thanks for the info.. I will keep it in mind when I fire the smoker up next time..