- Apr 27, 2012
- 3,244
- 178
Just re-read the MES 30 owners manual. It says uh uh--no charcoal briquettes or heat pellets. Some guys will put a whole charcoal briquette under the heating element to get that smoke ring. Like you, I wouldn't even mix the wood pellets with crushed briquettes.
I am not concerned with a smoke ring but this is what I found on a thread where it was being sought after using pellets, but at the same time this thread was addressing the extinguishing of the pellets from low air, absence of external heat and low oxygen issues, it is said that by mixing the charcoal bits with the pellets that it stops allot of the extinguishing issues most were having with the pellets, but it would seem most were due to low oxygen issues, the whole reason I put the stack on my smoker, I have only had one issue where it extinguished, it was incredibly humid but all I had to do was open the stack damper one notch and it was solved
MB also recommends the damper be fully closed for most smoking, open only for high moisture smoking of jerky or fish. But this seems counterintuitive to me. If there are airflow or oxygen problems inside the smoker keeping that top vent closed would likely exacerbate them to my unscientific way of thinking. I smoke with the top vent wide open but there can still be problems with the pellets snuffing out.