Costco Louisiana Grills Series 7 Pellet Vertical Smoker

[bill1]

I have a Masterbuilt Vertical pellet smoker, so I'm certainly not opposed to these types of pellet smokers but keep in mind they are really only intended for smoking. Most pellet grills have some method of approximating searing or reverse searing. So if you have limited space, or a spouse questioning your sanity, a pellet grill is a bit more flexible than a vertical pellet smoker. OTOH this vertical layout gives a lot of grill space without a lot of floor space. (And makes great food.)

Another minor advantage of the traditional pellet grill is it puts everything at a workbench height. Cleaning out these vertical machines is harder on the back!

 

[shamilton]

There is going to be a cool down when you open it and put in a large cold piece of meat. It will take a while to recover from that. I don't worry about the cool down. I set my temp and let it do its thing. As long as I am not getting a crazy spike in temp for a long period or one that is to low I don't sweat it.

Put the full water aluminum pan in. Pre-heat to 350, let it stay there for 10 minutes. Turn it down to 225 or whatever you want. Open the door, put the meat in, close the door. Within 1 hour it will be within 25 degrees or less. Within 2 hours, it'll be 15 or less.

 

[jmevox]

Put the full water aluminum pan in. Pre-heat to 350, let it stay there for 10 minutes. Turn it down to 225 or whatever you want. Open the door, put the meat in, close the door. Within 1 hour it will be within 25 degrees or less. Within 2 hours, it'll be 15 or less.

Thank you. This seems to be working real well. Have a pork butt in right now. Scared to spritz it cause the temp is holding right now lol

 

[shamilton]

Thank you. This seems to be working real well. Have a pork butt in right now. Scared to spritz it cause the temp is holding right now lol

DO NOT SPRITZ IT!!!!!!!

 

[jmevox]

DO NOT SPRITZ IT!!!!!!!

haha that’s debatable what people like to do with pork butt.

 

[shamilton]

haha that’s debatable what people like to do with pork butt.

If you're using those aluminum pans from costco - you have 2.5 gallons of liquid slowly evaporating in the chamber + a beautiful fatty pork butt!!! No need.

 

[jmevox]

If you're using those aluminum pans from costco - you have 2.5 gallons of liquid slowly evaporating in the chamber + a beautiful fatty pork butt!!! No need.

Hmmm okay you have been right thus far. Ill post a pic of the final product

 

[meskc]

How did it turn out?

 

[jmevox]

How did it turn out?

Pretty awesome.

 

[SCDrJ]

Do yourself a favor and throw that original pan in the trash where it belongs.
1. It does not hold enough water.
2. It restricts the airflow too much.

I removed the original pan and replaced it with a double aluminum pan that can also be purchased at Costco in a multi pack. I double them so it doesn't fold in half when carrying the used water away to dump it. the fire box dampens the direct heat so there is no need to have the original pan in there. As for where to place the food when smoking I start on the top and add racks as needed working my way down.

I have done many cooks with it and it makes a huge difference. If you look at my posts above I only get a 10 degree swing below the water and only 1 to 3 degree change above.



The reason for the swing is the auger dumps in a bunch of pellets, they burn fast increasing the temp. When they burn out it cools fast. When it drops enough it will dump in more pellets and repeat.

The aluminum pan holds about 10 times the amount of water as the original pan. This is what stabilizes the temperature on the top part of the smoker. It also gives better air flow which helps when smoking larger cuts of meat.

The hotter you run these smokers the less smoke you will get.

I have had a couple smokers before (propane and electric) and this by far injects more smoke into the meat. I was at Walmart yesterday and noticed they now sell the Amazen smoke tube so I picked one up in case I want to do a fast smoke.

Thanks for these tips. Wish I had seen these before my last smoke as mine got torched.

Got this smoker for Christmas from the wife, and have done a handful of cooks with it. Have had similar temperature control issues with it from the beginning, which were more obvious after I got the Thermoworks Signals and have been monitoring the temperature at the meat racks. I suffered from both a large differential from set point (50 degrees in some cases) and large temp swings (30-50 degrees wide), making cooking harder than needed. I know it's an analog controller, but this seems a little much.

All that said, the worst part came during the last cook, which was a 19lb brisket, my third brisket in this cooker. Cooked along fine albeit with the temp dial tweaking that is often needed... Got to the stall, wrapped, etc. and we were about 190-195 probe temps and about to decide to pull it when the signals read the pit temp at over 500 degrees.

I was able to safely enough open the door and yank out the meat, at which point I saw that a grease fire has started. The grease from a small tear in the wrap allowed a stream of grease to fall onto edge where the metal vents on the grease pan are, and down into the firebox itself where it ignited. I quickly closed the door and turned off the smoker. Realizing the cool-down procedure was still pumping air into the box, I unplugged it and allowed it to burn out, which it did over a few minutes. Thankfully nobody got hurt.

I think the grease pan and grease management of this smoker is a faulty design. The racks allow food to be placed in areas that aren't set up to catch the grease. I have put hours into trying to clean this thing out and it still smells. Have had to go the oven/grill cleaner route and bascially sand off the char with steel wool as none of my normal citrus-based cleaning stuff would touch it.

Dansons is replacing the RTD probe to try to help with the temp swings and sending me a new flame tamer as the paint on the old one burnt up in the grease, but I am a little concerned about the way this design works overall. Perhaps the full aluminum pan with water will give more coverage. If others have thoughts I'd love to hear them.

 

[meskc]

I used the stock pan the first two cooks. I did not like it. Did not hold much water and hard to clean. I switched to the larger pans I like them much better. I just double them up for strength. They hold more water and catches most if not all the grease from the meat. After the cook I dump it out and spray it out to get any grease residue off then put it back in waiting for the next cook. When they get really bad I just toss and get two more.

 

[shamilton]

Thanks for these tips. Wish I had seen these before my last smoke as mine got torched.

Got this smoker for Christmas from the wife, and have done a handful of cooks with it. Have had similar temperature control issues with it from the beginning, which were more obvious after I got the Thermoworks Signals and have been monitoring the temperature at the meat racks. I suffered from both a large differential from set point (50 degrees in some cases) and large temp swings (30-50 degrees wide), making cooking harder than needed. I know it's an analog controller, but this seems a little much.

All that said, the worst part came during the last cook, which was a 19lb brisket, my third brisket in this cooker. Cooked along fine albeit with the temp dial tweaking that is often needed... Got to the stall, wrapped, etc. and we were about 190-195 probe temps and about to decide to pull it when the signals read the pit temp at over 500 degrees.

I was able to safely enough open the door and yank out the meat, at which point I saw that a grease fire has started. The grease from a small tear in the brisket allowed a stream of grease to fall onto edge where the metal vents on the grease pan are, and down into the firebox itself where it ignited. I quickly closed the door and turned off the smoker. Realizing the cool-down procedure was still pumping air into the box, I unplugged it and allowed it to burn out, which it did over a few minutes. Thankfully nobody got hurt.

I think the grease pan and grease management of this smoker is a faulty design. The racks allow food to be placed in areas that aren't set up to catch the grease. I have put hours into trying to clean this thing out and it still smells. Have had to go the oven/grill cleaner route and bascially sand off the char with steel wool as none of my normal citrus-based cleaning stuff would touch it.

Dansons is replacing the RTD probe to try to help with the temp swings and sending me a new flame tamer as the paint on the old one burnt up in the grease, but I am a little concerned about the way this design works overall. Perhaps the full aluminum pan with water will give more coverage. If others have thoughts I'd love to hear them.

Full aluminum pan. Catches it all. Sorry about that mess :(. Glad you and the home were safe. Costco for those plans btw.

 

[MauleGuy]

I just bought the same smoker. That 24 hour smoke on your pork butt is a LONG time. The first thing I did on my smoker was to run my probe thermometer on it and placed the probe around the middle grate. Temp is consistently 35 degrees lower than the unit registers. Not surprising since the internal thermo probe is very close to the firebox. Not a deal killer for me...but a poor design. Once I account for this and set the temp accordingly it held really steady. So if you think you're smoking at 225, your likely below 200. that could account for your long smoke time.

I have a Louisiana Grills L900 and from my experience (> 1 yr) and many conversations w/ Pit Boss/LG customer service my conclusion is the controller and airflow in their products needs some work. "Actual Temperature" indicated on L900 never varies once the unit reaches the "Set Temp" while the measured temp a the cooking area is swinging +/- 25F-30F. 225F indicated can be 190F-260F.

I would expect the temperature to vary somewhat in a vertical smoker as the racks are farther from the burn pot. I can live with a constant temp at a given level, but I am betting that is not the case.

 

[SCDrJ]

Here is the last graph I got from my ThermoWorks. Set point was 300.

 

[bill1]

Looks to me like it's regulating well at 368F plus/minus 9deg with a cycling periodicity of about 5 minutes. That range and period all sounds pretty normal for a pellet grill.
If you're concerned about the 368 vs the 300 set point, I suspect that's a difference in thermometers. I assume the iPhone-coupled one is easily removed....what does it read at room temperature? How about in a pot of (212F) boiling water? If its accuracy appears to be far better than 68 degrees, it probably says the smoker's thermometer (that the setpoint is working for) has the accuracy issue. Is it clean? (It should be shiny.) How are the connections leading into controller...those might be worth checking for cleanliness and shininess. You could try replacing it with a factory original...or just live with it. I suspect if your set point was at 240 this would be reading 300 plus/minus 9deg with a cycling periodicity of about 5 minutes. Could that approach work?

 

[SCDrJ]

Thanks for the replies folks. Was inspired by some enterprising folks on YouTube and my favorable impression of the controller on my RecTec RT700 at another location that I bought the controller and finally got around to hacking it in yesterday!

Initial impressions are that it heats up quick and overshoots just a hair and then settles down pretty rock solid from there. Had some older pellets in there to burn off so let it run for couple hours and so far so good.

 

[Chris_in_SoCal]

Wow! I guess I was away from here longer than I thought. After about three years the original controller screen went out so I upgraded it to a PID controller. It took me a while just to find this old thread.

 

[Chris_in_SoCal]

I installed it in the hopper with a plastic box and clear silicone to seal it in.

 

[Poppo]

Costco recently started selling a Louisiana Grills brand series 7 vertical smoker that seems to have the same specifications as the Pit Boss series 7. They sell it for $599 but now have a warehouse price of $449 if you can find it in stores. It includes two temperature probes and a cover.

It took me three tries to find one but I did and got one home. There were many parts to get it finished but the instructions were easy to follow. I did the initial burn in today and plan on smoking a pork butt tomorrow to test it out.



It moves around easily with the large castors to store it when not in use. The cover has a zipper which makes it easy to install.



I will do my first cook tomorrow and report back on how well it smokes.

Congrats on the new smoker. Enjoy it