Do Different Brand Pellets Produce Different Amounts of Ash?

[Smoking Audi]

Over the weekend I smoked a pork butt at 250 for about 9.5 hours. Somewhere in the last hour it started billowing smoke from the hopper so I likely started having an auger fire, not totally sure yet. I suspect that my firepot is quite full of ash which likely contributed to the problem. I vac'd the firepot before the smoke so I know it was totally empty but I will say the last smoke was with the same pellets and it left the pot full as well.

Not sure of the brand but all I buy is Lumber Jack, Bear Mountain, or Pit Boss.

Is there a "best" or "better" brand or a way to control the amount of ash left behind? Will I produce less ash at a higher temp?

I am wanting to do a brisket this summer so I assume the smoke will be much longer than 9 - 10 hours but if I am filling the pot in that amount of time then I am never gonna be able to do a brisket. I really don't want to have to shut down at 9 hours to clean then restart.

My smoker is a Traeger Pro 34 that we bought in May 2021.

 

[1MoreFord]

Yes, different types and brands of pellets do leave different amounts of ash but I haven't used enough different types to address how much ash is left by different brands.

ETA - I've used LumberJack mostly and have not had a problem. Also no problem with B&B pecan or Camp Chef hickory. No Bear Mtn. yet and no Pit Boss.

 

[jcoleman66]

I have used the latter two and haven't noticed a extraordinary amount of ash.

 

[gmc2003]

Two things come to mind. I'm just guessing here because I don't own a pellet smoker, but I do own a pellet stove. I sounds like either you air intake and draft isn't working correctly, or some softwood may have been mixed in with your pellets by the manufacturer. Those are the two main contributors to heavy ash build up and clinkers in my pellet stove.

Chris

 

[sandyut]

from my reading - yes the amount of ash varies.

Hopper fires can be caused by buildup in the pot and or the intake fan being obstructed. the latter lowers the airflow and unburnt pellets build up - I think.

9-10 hours shouldnt be an issue. I run my rec teq for several multi hour cooks in between cleanings. I have never had a hopper fire, but I had a slow start once...once the pellets fired up it sounded like a jet and some was flying out of everywhere (but no the hopper).

 

[GrumpyGriller]

Over the weekend I smoked a pork butt at 250 for about 9.5 hours. Somewhere in the last hour it started billowing smoke from the hopper so I likely started having an auger fire, not totally sure yet. I suspect that my firepot is quite full of ash which likely contributed to the problem. I vac'd the firepot before the smoke so I know it was totally empty but I will say the last smoke was with the same pellets and it left the pot full as well.

Not sure of the brand but all I buy is Lumber Jack, Bear Mountain, or Pit Boss.

Is there a "best" or "better" brand or a way to control the amount of ash left behind? Will I produce less ash at a higher temp?

I am wanting to do a brisket this summer so I assume the smoke will be much longer than 9 - 10 hours but if I am filling the pot in that amount of time then I am never gonna be able to do a brisket. I really don't want to have to shut down at 9 hours to clean then restart.

My smoker is a Traeger Pro 34 that we bought in May 2021.

I use Pit Boss a lot in my Traeger T-1300 and they've been very good in my experience. In fact, for Memorial Day, I did a couple of 8+lb Pork Butts that were at 225 for about 14 hours, then 275 for about 1 1/2 hours or so. I've also had good luck with (believe or not) Walmart's Expert Pellets.

Since the Traeger's use a timer basically to say - "firepots don't clean themselves" and "time to clean the grill", I am pretty diligent in cleaning out the grease traps, vacuuming the firepot and the rest of the interior using a buckethead vac.

Some people sift the pellets to remove ash before putting them in the hopper, but I don't see the need for that. The only other thing that may have affected you was tunneling, where the pellet hopper ends up with a tunnel effect as the pellets are fed - maybe it was searching for pellets and didn't get enough and once they caught up, it had fed too much to the firepot. I don't babysit mine, but when I think about it, I'll open the hopper and smooth out the pellets if I am not adding more for the cook.

Let us know if you identify any root cause and good luck!

 

[bigfurmn]

I have noticed Bear Mountain seems to have more ash than Lumberjack. Not a lot more but enough that I’ve noticed cleaning it out.

 

[Smoking Audi]

Thanks for the replies, yes once I tear into it I will let the collective know what I find. I did look at the fan and did not see anything out of the ordinary with it. I know the hopper did not run dry of pellets. It was full when I started and periodically I will check the hopper since it tends to pull from the middle and create a funnel look. I always "knock down" the funnel every few hours so it does not draw a void in the hopper.

Yard work tonight after work so I may not get to the smoker.

 

[SmokinEdge]

Keep in mind while you are trying to figure this out that you can keep a large foil pan on stand by so that if the cooker gets messed up somewhere in the cook you can move the meat to the foil pan and into the oven to finish. After 8-10 hours on the cooker heat is heat. This is a good backup plan.

 

[1MoreFord]

................ Some people sift the pellets to remove ash before putting them in the hopper, ..........................

That's not ash. That's wood dust. Ash is the remaining waste byproduct of combustion.

 

[schlotz]

Same as bigfurmn , Bear Mountain in my MAK produced more ash than Lumberjack. Also in my MAK, Lumberjack produces more ash than BBQ'er Delight, which has been the best in regards to lowest amount of ash.

 

[BCP3006]

Over the weekend I smoked a pork butt at 250 for about 9.5 hours. Somewhere in the last hour it started billowing smoke from the hopper so I likely started having an auger fire, not totally sure yet. I suspect that my firepot is quite full of ash which likely contributed to the problem. I vac'd the firepot before the smoke so I know it was totally empty but I will say the last smoke was with the same pellets and it left the pot full as well.

Not sure of the brand but all I buy is Lumber Jack, Bear Mountain, or Pit Boss.

Is there a "best" or "better" brand or a way to control the amount of ash left behind? Will I produce less ash at a higher temp?

I am wanting to do a brisket this summer so I assume the smoke will be much longer than 9 - 10 hours but if I am filling the pot in that amount of time then I am never gonna be able to do a brisket. I really don't want to have to shut down at 9 hours to clean then restart.

My smoker is a Traeger Pro 34 that we bought in May 2021.

Moisture could be the culprit with the pellets not burning completely.
You have to store your pellets and something that you can seal so the moisture in the atmosphere will not be absorbed by the pellets because they are very very hygroscopic. Do not leave pellets in your Hopper after a smoke gets those suckers out of there and put them in a tupperware container big enough to hold what you're using snap that lid on there to keep the moisture in the atmosphere from destroying your pellets.
These are just some suggestions that may help you maybe not. But you're talking about Ash like the pellet has already been burnt...

I would take a handful of pellets and burn them then into the pot and put another hand full of pellets in that you have good luck with and burn them and measure the volume between the two. The higher the quality of the pellet the less Ash there will be...

I believe pellets with less hardwood in them will create more Ash. Check your bag and see if it says you have a blended pellet and try to see what wood they are using.

Happy grilling from The lone Star State

 

[BCP3006]

Moisture could be the culprit with the pellets not burning completely.
You have to store your pellets and something that you can seal so the moisture in the atmosphere will not be absorbed by the pellets because they are very very hygroscopic. Do not leave pellets in your Hopper after a smoke gets those suckers out of there and put them in a tupperware container big enough to hold what you're using snap that lid on there to keep the moisture in the atmosphere from destroying your pellets.
These are just some suggestions that may help you maybe not. But you're talking about Ash like the pellet has already been burnt...

I would take a handful of pellets and burn them then into the pot and put another hand full of pellets in that you have good luck with and burn them and measure the volume between the two. The higher the quality of the pellet the less Ash there will be...

I believe pellets with less hardwood in them will create more Ash. Check your bag and see if it says you have a blended pellet and try to see what wood they are using.

Happy grilling from The lone Star State

If you have your damper cut back quite a bit that can cause smoke to build up in your smoker and it will seek out ways to leave wherever there may be a crack to sneak out through.

 

[BCP3006]

Over the weekend I smoked a pork butt at 250 for about 9.5 hours. Somewhere in the last hour it started billowing smoke from the hopper so I likely started having an auger fire, not totally sure yet. I suspect that my firepot is quite full of ash which likely contributed to the problem. I vac'd the firepot before the smoke so I know it was totally empty but I will say the last smoke was with the same pellets and it left the pot full as well.

Not sure of the brand but all I buy is Lumber Jack, Bear Mountain, or Pit Boss.

Is there a "best" or "better" brand or a way to control the amount of ash left behind? Will I produce less ash at a higher temp?

I am wanting to do a brisket this summer so I assume the smoke will be much longer than 9 - 10 hours but if I am filling the pot in that amount of time then I am never gonna be able to do a brisket. I really don't want to have to shut down at 9 hours to clean then restart.

My smoker is a Traeger Pro 34 that we bought in May 2021.

Pellet manufacturers are not regulated to what they can say on their packaging about what type of wood is in the pellets.

That's why I'm running in circles trying to find pellets that will create blue smoke instead of white when all I can find is pellets that only give off white smoke. Poor quality wood holds more moisture.

When the packaging says hardwood blend it may actually not have any hardwood in it at all. And people that don't know what color the smoke should be coming out of their barbecue doesn't help the problem any because they keep going back and buying the same pellets that create the white smoke and that doesn't motivate the pellet manufacturer to try and create blue smoke if the pellets they are selling are selling like hotcakes.. don't fix it if it's not broke..can you just hear the manufacturer saying that to themselves???

 

[BCP3006]

Over the weekend I smoked a pork butt at 250 for about 9.5 hours. Somewhere in the last hour it started billowing smoke from the hopper so I likely started having an auger fire, not totally sure yet. I suspect that my firepot is quite full of ash which likely contributed to the problem. I vac'd the firepot before the smoke so I know it was totally empty but I will say the last smoke was with the same pellets and it left the pot full as well.

Not sure of the brand but all I buy is Lumber Jack, Bear Mountain, or Pit Boss.

Is there a "best" or "better" brand or a way to control the amount of ash left behind? Will I produce less ash at a higher temp?

I am wanting to do a brisket this summer so I assume the smoke will be much longer than 9 - 10 hours but if I am filling the pot in that amount of time then I am never gonna be able to do a brisket. I really don't want to have to shut down at 9 hours to clean then restart.

My smoker is a Traeger Pro 34 that we bought in May 2021.

 

[BCP3006]

The type of wood, the way they're processed and stored has a lot to do with the quality of the pellet and the ash Left behibd.

If you initially start out using premium hardwood all these other problems with the pellets should be non-existent.

There is no regulatory agency to regulate what pellet manufacturers say is actually in their pellets. They could say made from all hardwood but an actual sense there may not be any hardwood in those pellets kind of theorizing that that was why I was told to try many different brands of pellets until you find ones that work. I spent about $160 trying to find pellets that would work and all they did was give off white smoke then one day I picked up a brand at the end of barbecuing season last year I took it home and threw a handful in the vertical pit boss pellet smoker and it started spitting out blue smoke . If you have thin blue smoke being created you're supposed to be having two different types of gas in your cooking chamber mixing together and giving your meat that wood Smoky flavor . So where the flavor is I don't know..

How do the pellet smoker gurus on YouTube always come to bragging about the flavor of pellet that they're usingwhere do they get their pellets straight from the manufacturer without having to sit on a warehouse shelf somewhere for the Lord only knows how long then when you buy it off the shelf at the store you don't know how long they store those pellets in their warehouse before putting them out for sale. . I can get blue smoke but no flavor.

 

[Smoking Audi]

Sorry for the delay. A month later and I finally got a chance to use the smoker again. When I opened it up to clean I noticed A LOT of ash in the pot, more than normal and this was not the first time using these pellets. We store pellets in the bags in our garage and once open they go into buckets.

I had never seen our smoker produce this kind of ash before either. It’s typically small and powdery and maybe half to 2/3 full at most. This was completely full of loose larger flakes. I also got some pellets out of the auger that looked like they were close to fire.

We just ran it for about 45 minutes for burgers so I will likely tear it down again and check the pot

 

[WCBBQ]

Hi Smoking Audi, I also happen to drive a Q5 TDI, as to your question another factor with the amount of ash produced during a burn is the amount of bark in the pellets. I'm a small manufacturer of Wine Infused Oak Pellets. Our pellets are 100% wine making oak. This oak has no bark and I can burn a full hopper in my GMG Daniel Boon before cleaning. As BCP3006 says "If you initially start out using premium hardwood all these other problems with the pellets should be non-existent." Wine making oak is toasted before making the wine so a lot of the tars and acrid flavors are removed. These pellets are predominantly French White Oak (yes from Europe) with a little bit of American White Oak mixed in. I hope you get past these issues and get to enjoy the awesome flavors these smokers add to our foods.