Pellet Brand Recommendations?

[1MoreFord]

So far I'm liking LumberJack 100% Hickory. Good pellets at a great price in my area.

 

[bill1]

I tried a bag of the Kingsford hickory and was impressed with the amount of smoke they produced, caught them at a decent price , bought 10 bags last year discounted and the smoke was way less, not sure what changed but they were much better

What changed was time. The raw materials of wood stocks are variable products. The fence boards I bought last year are different than the ones I buy now.
Do any of these upscale products (LJ, BM, etc) include a stock/date code on the bag so I can at least know that any two bags will be the same?
Anyone want to comment on the consistency of their fave products? I gave up on Traeger because each bag seemed to get consistently worse. Maybe there's an annual cycle and I just need to know WHEN to buy them?
FWIW, I've found PitBoss to be fairly consistent...I've been buying them pretty steady for the past 3-4 years.

 

[bill1]

Turns out there's a Lumber Jack of Wisconsin that makes heating (not cooking) pellets:

Lumber Jack of Louisiana is what you want for cooking.

 

[1MoreFord]

Nope, LumberJack heating and BBQ pellets are made by the same company in Wisconsin.

Products | GLRE

glrepellets.com

 

[SmokingUPnorth]

Like smokingame said. The a-maz-n tray is a great addition to pellet smokers

 

[bill1]

Nope, LumberJack heating and BBQ pellets are made by the same company in Wisconsin.

Products | GLRE

glrepellets.com

My mistake, sorry. The Louisiana outfit may just be a local distributor of the Great Lakes home company. And there's been packaging changes to both heating and cooking lines.

But it does raise the question as to whether a vendor's products might be more locally sourced although under the parent company's QC, however lax or stringent that may be. So to be sure you're reproducing someone else's pellet experience, you probably need to pay to have them shipped from the same location that that person used.

FWIW, my prior comments applied to products bought in-store at No. CA locations of Costco, Lowe's, Walmart, and the now defunct OSH. If you're shopping for the same product at other locations, well, your mileage may vary.

Here's the LA link:

https://m.facebook.com/LumberJackofLouisiana/

 

[1MoreFord]

bill1, I don't facebook so I would never have seen LJ of LA w/o you bringing it up. I think you're right and they are a sales outlet.

I buy my LJ pellets from Atwoods Ranch and Home. They are from GLRE and look like all the other LJ cooking pellet bags I've ever seen.

 

[dons2346]

I started with Bear Mountain but after reading about LumberJack here, I gave them a try. Problem is that I can't get any hickory

 

[bill1]

...I can't get any hickory...

LJ markets an awful lot of blends. Almost wish they'd stock just pure woods and just suggest to us the end user what makes a good blend.

 

[NoCoPK360]

I use a lot of Lumberjack and have also used Bear Mountain both are great and reasonably priced. Another option if you can catch them on sale at Lowes are the Weber Smokefire pellets. I think they are just rebranded Lumberjack, but Lowes clears them out in the winter for around 8 bucks a bag which is a great price.

 

[Fishonshawn]

I haven't used LJ pellets but I do really like the Bear Mountain pellets. They've also been doing a BOGO through their site lately.

To expensive through their site though. I buy bear mtn pellets at coastal farm. Not only are they almost half the cost but add the sales they do every 2 or so months on them and you can't beat it. Just got a dozen bags the other day. Buy 2 get 1 free. Sometimes its buy 1 get 1 half off...either way they are usually at or under $10 a bag regular price at coastal farm but $18 plus whatever shipping is off their site...

 

[bill1]

I use a lot of Lumberjack and have also used Bear Mountain both are great and reasonably priced. Another option if you can catch them on sale at Lowes are the Weber Smokefire pellets. I think they are just rebranded Lumberjack, but Lowes clears them out in the winter for around 8 bucks a bag which is a great price.

Lo, and behold, my local Lowe's had the Webers on sale for just this weekend, $17 marked down to $10 so I got a couple bags and will give them a try. They only had 20# bags of equal mixes of maple, hickory, and cherry. Seemed like a bit of a weird blend to me but I say the same about a lot of cocktails.

I do kinda' miss they don't have a zip-lock top like the cheap PitBoss 20-pounders. I find that a surprisingly useful feature. So I probably won't open these until I free up a few more coffee cans.