Here's my issue with pellet smokers

[BBQBakas]

Just smoked a 20 lb. brisket on GMG Daniel Boone. Members of this community have helped me learn techniques and things to watch out for. One of the best bits of advice was to get an Inkbird wifi thermometer so I know what the actual temp is inside my cook chamber.

The 20 pounder was started last night at 8pm after trim, seasoning and standing at room temp for an hour. According to math and the thickness of the meat, it should have taken roughly 18 hours. My target cook temp was 225-250°. The goal was to finish the cook sometime early afternoon and then rest for 3-4 hours wrapped in a towel in a YETI cooler.

The brisket actually finished cooking at 8am when it reached 205 in the flat— 6 hours ahead of schedule. It's now sitting in a 155° oven still wrapped.

The issue with my GMG is I couldn't really get it to hold the temp in the 225-250° window. For the first 4 hours I would check the Inkbird — one moment the cook chamber would be 235°, fifteen minutes later it was 280°. I checked the temp a number of times during the first four hours and every time it was all over the place. Only opened the lid once after 4 hours to spritz with apple cider.

I thought the whole point of pellet smokers is set it and forget it. Or at least set it and it stays around a general temperature. Even with careful observation the temperature swings were dramatic. At 3am when I spritzed with tallow and wrapped the outside temperature was 50°. Not too cold but surely that affected the grill. BTW, ordered a GMG blanket but it didn't arrive in time. Luckily, I caught it and pulled the brisket. Bark looks great. The bottom is a tiny bit burnt like jerky but not too bad. The tallow helped a lot.

How do we get these smokers to hold a more consistent temperature? This is the my biggest challenge with the GMG.

 

[kilo charlie]

I'm not familiar with the Inkbird.. but I have a 4 dollar oven thermometer hanging in my vertical smoker and that tells me the temp inside is staying rock solid at whatever I set my Pit Boss to.

 

[BGKYSmoker]

You wont get a constant temp. All smokers have hot and cold spots, temp fluctuations. Even my TSM with a PID fluctuates in temp.

If you want set it and forget it you need to get a ronco rotisserie from ron popeil...

 

[bregent]

I know it might seem a bit unsettling, but the temp swings you are seeing are not going to cause any cooking issues. Many pellet grills have swings in that range.

According to math and the thickness of the meat, it should have taken roughly 18 hours.

You can't know when a brisket will be done based on math. And remember that food almost always cooks faster in a pellet grill than other smokers because it is basically a convection oven.

 

[civilsmoker]

Yup what SWFL said....a +/- swing is very normal.....IE most home ovens swing 25 deg from set temp as well. I suspect what you are seeing in the 280 swing is when the fire pot fan turns on and it blows some hot air through the camber.

Second, Brisket or any protein doesnt cook on a schedule.....time is just a general rule for planning. Next I always generally plan to have a brisket hit the finish temp at least 2-4 hours prior to eating for resting and such. Many folks put it in a cooler, I put it in the warming oven covered at 170-180 ish….This makes the best brisket for me....

 

[sandyut]

the temp swings occur in some pellet smokers but not all. I cant speak for all, but my rec teq doesnt. its within +/- 5 degrees of set point at its worst. But temp swings shouldnt affect the cook all that much. Especially on a large brisket. emotionally we all want the smokers to run consistent. but they sometime dont.

The cold weather blanket will help with pellet consumption when cool/cold, but thats all they do. I have one too.

As has been said by civilsmoker and bregent , the meat is done when its done. Any estimates/calculations are questemates at best. After too many late or missed meals - I just plan for much longer.

One brisket (and pork butt for that matter) cook suggestion, you can and many of us do run these at 275 (some slightly hotter) to keep the cook time down. I haven't done an overnight or 4am start in years on same day meals and I love that.

 

[SmokyMose]

I just did a packer a couple of days ago and my offset went from 250 to 290 all day long. No problem, it's done when it's done and you can't really foretell it.
I don't know squat about pellet smokers but I don't think there is such a thing as "set and forget" in any smoker....

 

[Fishonshawn]

My camp chef has massive temp swings like that too and its never affected a cook negatively. Not a big deal. The thing is when you set the temp it knows it has to dump x amount of pellets in x amount of time to hit that temp and it just goes on a timer I believe. It will dump the same amount over and over. You turn the temp up itll dump more pellets at a quicker rate and im sure the fan plays a part in it too. Im not 100% sure but I believe that's how it works. The reason the rec tec grill mentioned above doesn't have swings like that is rec tec uses a PID controller. PID controllers don't dump pellets based on a time limit but actually read the temp of your grill and adjusts how much it needs to spit out based on that. Thats why it has a more consistent temp. Its always adjusting itself based on what your grill is doing.

I'm definitely not an expert and I may have just fabricated all that. But I believe its close to the truth.

Oh and they are set and forget. Baby sitting it ain't gona change anything.

 

[Chasdev]

My Masterbuilt 560 is pretty darn close to set and forget.
It holds steady temps all day long.

 

[rbnice1]

Yea got to say that is a lotta swinging. My last brisket cook:
The first hour I was adjusting to get the right ambient I wanted. Then the dips are from my spriting hitting the probe since its a meater.

 

[BBQBakas]

The brisket turned out pretty good anyway. The bottom 1/8" was a little crispy but the rest of the brisket turned out awesome. Instead of doing dinner, everyone was able to come over for lunch. Snapped these photos before the entire thing was hoovered up.

 

[bill1]

The newer pellet grills tend to have controllers that do a little better than the older ones. You might ask GMG if you have the latest and greatest in both hardware and firmware and enquire about upgrade possibilities if you don't.
But remember we're burning wood here. Compared to an offset, your GMG is doing fine. At the end of the day, if you cook to internal temperature, you won't be disappointed.
If ensuring your temp swings are less than 10F is really important to you, you almost need to go with electric filament heating. That's the way you turn drive power on and off in milliseconds and element cooking heat in seconds. With wood, all you've got is feed rate and airflow. For a raging localized fire, these controls have response times of many minutes.

 

[JWFokker]

I believe most commercial/industrial smokers are electric or gas. The burning wood is not a significant source of heat.

 

[Buttah Butts]

Those huge temp swings is why I got rid of my GMG and Traeger. I got a Rec Tec bull now and do not have those issues anymore

 

[BrianGSDTexoma]

That brisket looks amazing to me!

 

[SCBBQ]

My cookshack doesn’t swing more than a few degrees the entire time. It’s a Commerical version and 100% pellet .

 

[sandyut]

I got a Rec Tec bull now and do not have those issues anymore

Same - rock solid temps.

 

[BBQBakas]

Thank you for the feedback everyone.

 

[FFchampMT]

Thank you for the feedback everyone.

Late to the party but here's my $0.02 - I cut my smoking teeth on a GMG Daniel Boone. It's a good entry level smoker, but it's hard to 'set it and forget it'. I experienced the same issues as you with temp swings, but was able to still put out some good BBQ. Couple the temp swings with hot zones, and you end up with odd cooks.

Brisket can cook at 225 or 300, so that part should be OK, but the crunchy bottom was something I hated too. It's the radiant heat from the drip tray doing it. I used to do a tight wrap on the tray with aluminum foil and then a 'loose' wrap to try and get that 1/2" of airspace. It works OK but the drippings eventually weigh it down.

Today she's sitting in the yard covered, waiting to go to a new home with a buddy. Once I got a taste of the smoke from a 22" WSM and started doing sausage in the MES, I never fired it up again.

 

[bill1]

... I cut my smoking teeth on a GMG Daniel Boone. It's a good entry level smoker, but it's hard to 'set it and forget it'. I experienced the same issues as you with temp swings...

I just made a similar comment on another thread but early pellet units were ground-breaking products. And it takes a few iterations to get the bugs out. Additionally, GMG is not a high-volume outfit so it might take a while longer for the software/hardware upgrades to churn through. But GMG seems to be a quality outfit with smart leadership. Can anyone with a later model GMG comment if the newer units work better with regard to temp stability?