pit boss smoker troubleshooting
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Hi there and welcome!
I'm not a pellet smoker guy so I cant help you much with the question about the smoke setting and the temp of your pit boss pellet smoker.
HOWEVER, I can help you when it comes to ribs and maybe give a few tidbits of advice that may help to avoid ruining any future ribs or meat.
Pellet grills work on feeding pellets into a flame, as you already know :)
So since YOU are not the one controlling the feeding u are at the mercy of what the smoker can/wants to do, but never fear u still have plenty of control.
With that said u still have a lot of tricks up your sleeve to ensure you get good ribs or smoked meat.
#1 - IMPORTANT - I would suggest you get a dual probe wireless thermometer (or more probes like 4-6) so you can measure the temperature of your smoke at rack level and the Internal Ttemperature (IT) of your meat. This is a very fundamental step for "up"-ing ones smoking meat bbq game since most dishes are cooked by temp vs time and dishes like ribs, pork butts, and briskets are cooked till tender vs temp or time lol.
#2 - Ribs happen to be a cut that actually doesn't care what temp it is smoked/cooked at so as long as you know your temps of the smoker and the meat you ensure your meat is never ruined and comes out to perfection regardless of what the smoker decides to do haha. So again see point #1.
Basically ribs are done when they are tender and usually they are tender at 195F-198F Internal Temp (IT). You can check for tenderness by stabbing them with a toothpick and if it goes in with little or no resistance then they are tender. If you want fall of the bone ribs then u want like NO resistance once u penetrate the bark. If u want pull off the bone then u want the slightest detectable resistance. SmokinAl did a really good post where he takes ribs to 195F IT and they are bite off the bone. I personally like a middle ground of 198F. I have gone all the way up to 201F where they are on the verge of fall of the bone but not quite there so that gives u some temp understanding on ribs and what u can achieve NO MATTER what the smoker temp is. After all people grill ribs at way higher heats than smokers are usually cooking ribs.
#3 - If you are worried about producing more smoke then lots of pellet smoker people turn to a pellet smoker tube that you fill with pellets and light for 10 min and blow out and it generates perfect smoke independently from your bit poss. This way YOU can better control the amount of smoke your meat gets while the pit boss is doing it's thing for heat and smoke! The A-Maze-N Pellet Smoker tube is a good one that people use. The extended oval shaped one would be the one i would look at.
#4 - Never smoke food based on time (well rarely ever go based on time). Internal Temp will tell you when something is done or in the case of stuff like briskets and pork butts it will tell you when to check for tenderness. So see point #1 for the thermometor
Feel free to ask questions about anything I've posted here and know we have an amazing community so ask all the questions at any time and I'm sure we can get you fixed up and avoiding future bad rib smokes. I'm sure soon u will be telling us all how to do it better :)
I'm not a pellet smoker guy so I cant help you much with the question about the smoke setting and the temp of your pit boss pellet smoker.
HOWEVER, I can help you when it comes to ribs and maybe give a few tidbits of advice that may help to avoid ruining any future ribs or meat.
Pellet grills work on feeding pellets into a flame, as you already know :)
So since YOU are not the one controlling the feeding u are at the mercy of what the smoker can/wants to do, but never fear u still have plenty of control.
With that said u still have a lot of tricks up your sleeve to ensure you get good ribs or smoked meat.
#1 - IMPORTANT - I would suggest you get a dual probe wireless thermometer (or more probes like 4-6) so you can measure the temperature of your smoke at rack level and the Internal Ttemperature (IT) of your meat. This is a very fundamental step for "up"-ing ones smoking meat bbq game since most dishes are cooked by temp vs time and dishes like ribs, pork butts, and briskets are cooked till tender vs temp or time lol.
#2 - Ribs happen to be a cut that actually doesn't care what temp it is smoked/cooked at so as long as you know your temps of the smoker and the meat you ensure your meat is never ruined and comes out to perfection regardless of what the smoker decides to do haha. So again see point #1.
Basically ribs are done when they are tender and usually they are tender at 195F-198F Internal Temp (IT). You can check for tenderness by stabbing them with a toothpick and if it goes in with little or no resistance then they are tender. If you want fall of the bone ribs then u want like NO resistance once u penetrate the bark. If u want pull off the bone then u want the slightest detectable resistance. SmokinAl did a really good post where he takes ribs to 195F IT and they are bite off the bone. I personally like a middle ground of 198F. I have gone all the way up to 201F where they are on the verge of fall of the bone but not quite there so that gives u some temp understanding on ribs and what u can achieve NO MATTER what the smoker temp is. After all people grill ribs at way higher heats than smokers are usually cooking ribs.
#3 - If you are worried about producing more smoke then lots of pellet smoker people turn to a pellet smoker tube that you fill with pellets and light for 10 min and blow out and it generates perfect smoke independently from your bit poss. This way YOU can better control the amount of smoke your meat gets while the pit boss is doing it's thing for heat and smoke! The A-Maze-N Pellet Smoker tube is a good one that people use. The extended oval shaped one would be the one i would look at.
#4 - Never smoke food based on time (well rarely ever go based on time). Internal Temp will tell you when something is done or in the case of stuff like briskets and pork butts it will tell you when to check for tenderness. So see point #1 for the thermometor
Feel free to ask questions about anything I've posted here and know we have an amazing community so ask all the questions at any time and I'm sure we can get you fixed up and avoiding future bad rib smokes. I'm sure soon u will be telling us all how to do it better :)
I'd call Pit Boss and tell them what's going on but first you need to get a dual probe thermo that you have tested in both boiling and ice water. InkBird is a sponsor here on the forum and if you send them a message requesting a discount code to Amazon they will most likely oblige you with one. After you get the thermo do a dry run with the smoker and document the temps every 30 minutes for two hours or so you can tell the people at P.B. what's going on with the smoker in detail. I'd run one probe up next to the cookers probe inside the smoke chamber on the left side than one at grate level. Temp swings are normal with pellet cookers but not normally 100*.
I have a Camp Chef and the temp swings are 30 to 50* at times, which is no big deal. If you are the OCD type the pellet grill is going to drive you insane trying to maintain a constant temp on them is not going to happen unless you spend a lot more money on one of the top end cookers even then they don't hold a constant temp all the time, it's the nature of the beast with pretty much all pellet cookers as far as I know.
Temp swings with in 20 to 50* won't hurt a thing unless you're smoking cheese or very delicate shell fish and things like that. Pork, beef and fowl can handle the temp swings in fact your home oven most likely has temp swings with the 20 to 50* when you're baking or broiling, so you are good to go if your cooker is with in those temps.
And don't worry about smoke leaking from the cooking chamber these cookers aren't designed to hold temps in the cooking chamber like other smokers they are under constant positive air pressure because of the fan so it doesn't matter whether the smoke is escaping through a gap in the door or the smoke stack.
Best of luck to you.
Dan
Last edited:
I had the copperhead 5series from Walmart. I couldn't figure out why sometimes 10 lbs of chicken quarters would take 2 hours and then the next time 4 hours. I bought the inkbird wifi 4 probe and quickly figured out it was running whatever temp it felt like running during that cook. I messed with taking out the factory water pan and adding the foil pans and it did nothing. I would get 160° temp swings. The probe for the actual smoker was clean as well. So I took it back to walmart and went with a different brand.
Lol. I just figured I got one put together at the end of a 24hr shift by a guy that was headed to the next sweat shop for his next 24hr shiftI don't understand why they can't make these things more consistent. Can it really be that hard for a team of developers to make something that actually holds a ball park temp? I thought the Chinese were good at stealing electronic designs?
To be honest though I might have had a hand in it not being true. I made some bacon wrapped jalapeno poppers and had some back to far on the rack. So the grease went behind the grease pan and down into the firebox. So I had quite the inferno raging when I opened the door. But besides all that I wasn't happy with the overall design. The whole smoker on the outside would get screaming hot. And the door sagged by about 3/4 of inch due to cheap metal on the door and hinges. Which I guess for 400 I should've expected all of that.
Well sorry your having troubles but no info listed that I see for the smoker model or age? sounds like the temp probe for the controller maybe bad, they have a 5 year warranty so I would give PB a call,we can theorize and dump on them till dark thirty but you need support from the maker imo ,
Kathleen;
I have a Louisiana Grills L900 which is, as far as I can tell, a Pit Boss grill with a few differences.
Their controller has some "quirks". Once you set a temp and the grill gets to that temp the "actual" temp shown remains at the "set temp". I normally put two temp probes in the cooking chamber and hang them from the upper grate so they hang down almost level with the installed temp probe.
I see some pretty large temp swings over time on my two probes.
1. Set at 225F the temps were measured at up to 260F and on occasions below 225F, but predominantly the temps measured were ranged from 230-260. Results are meats get done faster and with less smoke. All this while the "actual" temp on the display remained at 225F.
2. The probe farthest from the fire pot (R) would be reading 250-260F while the probe on the left nearer the fire pot was seldom reading 225F usually in the 210 or so range unless the R probe got to 260 then the L probe showed 225 or so.
As Forktender pointed out this is manageable but really annoying since inserting a probe in ribs is really unreliable. On top of that if one smokes two items for example two pork butts the one on the right gets done about an hour faster than the one on the left.
All this is probably a design issue with a large barrel with lots of openings along the top back of the barrel.
I have a Louisiana Grills L900 which is, as far as I can tell, a Pit Boss grill with a few differences.
Their controller has some "quirks". Once you set a temp and the grill gets to that temp the "actual" temp shown remains at the "set temp". I normally put two temp probes in the cooking chamber and hang them from the upper grate so they hang down almost level with the installed temp probe.
I see some pretty large temp swings over time on my two probes.
1. Set at 225F the temps were measured at up to 260F and on occasions below 225F, but predominantly the temps measured were ranged from 230-260. Results are meats get done faster and with less smoke. All this while the "actual" temp on the display remained at 225F.
2. The probe farthest from the fire pot (R) would be reading 250-260F while the probe on the left nearer the fire pot was seldom reading 225F usually in the 210 or so range unless the R probe got to 260 then the L probe showed 225 or so.
As Forktender pointed out this is manageable but really annoying since inserting a probe in ribs is really unreliable. On top of that if one smokes two items for example two pork butts the one on the right gets done about an hour faster than the one on the left.
All this is probably a design issue with a large barrel with lots of openings along the top back of the barrel.
bill1
Master of the Pit
- Apr 25, 2015
- 1,955
- 915
KM, I think a lot of folks ruin their first meal with a pellet grill. The startup sequence with these can be tricky. For beginners it's not a bad idea to run the thing an hour or so before even adding the meat. Here's a few things that might have conspired against you..
1. Auger should be fully primed (full of pellets) and the cup/crucible loaded with 1/3-1/2 cup of pellets when you start the cook mode. The controller is easily "confused" otherwise.
2. The controller needs to "learn" how the sensors respond to its controls, especially at first. (Kinda' like learning to drive a car.) Rocky starts are common.
3. Things like flame diverters and grease ramps are pretty important to the whole fire management design and need to be in their proper location. Nothing is worse than an exposed flame in the cook chamber to cause a temperature spike. (Although I remove these at the start of every cook to visually ensure against overflowed pellets or open grease spills, you do want to make sure they're all back in their place as soon as you see "first smoke".)
4. Are you hearing the combustion fan? It should sound really loud (running at full speed) within 10 minutes of initial start. That's when it's trying to create the greatest flames in the firepot to bring the temp of the entire cooker up from ambient. That combustion fan is critical to the control system and unfortunately they can break and even come dead-on-arrival.
The 2nd cook will probably be better. Let us know how it goes. Never hurts to cook a package of hot dogs in learning mode so the pain isn't quite as bad.
1. Auger should be fully primed (full of pellets) and the cup/crucible loaded with 1/3-1/2 cup of pellets when you start the cook mode. The controller is easily "confused" otherwise.
2. The controller needs to "learn" how the sensors respond to its controls, especially at first. (Kinda' like learning to drive a car.) Rocky starts are common.
3. Things like flame diverters and grease ramps are pretty important to the whole fire management design and need to be in their proper location. Nothing is worse than an exposed flame in the cook chamber to cause a temperature spike. (Although I remove these at the start of every cook to visually ensure against overflowed pellets or open grease spills, you do want to make sure they're all back in their place as soon as you see "first smoke".)
4. Are you hearing the combustion fan? It should sound really loud (running at full speed) within 10 minutes of initial start. That's when it's trying to create the greatest flames in the firepot to bring the temp of the entire cooker up from ambient. That combustion fan is critical to the control system and unfortunately they can break and even come dead-on-arrival.
The 2nd cook will probably be better. Let us know how it goes. Never hurts to cook a package of hot dogs in learning mode so the pain isn't quite as bad.
KM - I also have a Pit Boss - the small Tailgater. In Smoke mode, the pellet feed (auger motor) is controlled by on/off time period set with the "P" setting. This factory default is set to P4. Press the "P Set" button once to increase it to P5. This will feed pellets less frequently for a lower temperature. Note: This only works in Smoke Setting. The owners instruction manual explains this fairly well. Hope this helps. Good Luck!.
Sounds like an auger pause issue. P-Setting all pellet grills have a form of this setting.
P = the pause in between turning (adding pellets). higher number = longer pause = less pellets. and v/v. So when it 100 degres out you need to slow the feeding of the fire. and then when its cold it will take more pellets for the same temp.
you can likely find YouTube on this as well good luck.!
P = the pause in between turning (adding pellets). higher number = longer pause = less pellets. and v/v. So when it 100 degres out you need to slow the feeding of the fire. and then when its cold it will take more pellets for the same temp.
you can likely find YouTube on this as well good luck.!
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