1 of our forum members tried a lot of different things to make the HD plate work and not sure he perfected it, he had a lot of ecess heat problems, pellet smokers burn very clean so the smoke is lighter, folks claim they are not smokers but I disagree , they burn 100% wood where as other real smokers may use charcoal along with wood for flavor, everybody has different taste buds and no 1 person is happy with every rig out there. Folks can kick any rig they want to, I love mine and it produces some great food, the wife cant take a lot of smoke these days so I get to use it more than some of my other smokers. I always tell folks to find somebody with a pellet smoker and get a few samples to try.
I have had experience with the Heavy D.
And I could not agree with forum member RC Alan more when he says:
“ ... In my honest opinion, the SD Wood Burning Heat Diffuser, is great as a heat diffuser, but very difficult to manage and control temps with while burning wood in it.. I only use it now as a heat diffuser. “
This is now how I use the Heavy D. I use it as a warp resistant diffuser only and make no attempt to burn wood in it any longer.
I tried wrapping wood in foil, soaking the wood first, you name it. I could not use it with wood in it and not have my temps get out of control.
The wood would ultimately ignite and burn out of control. With foil, well smoking and eating smoked foods is bad enough from a health standpoint to begin with.
None of this is particularly "good" for you.
However wrapping wood in foil in an attempt to keep it from combusting, and exposing the foil to high heat made me start to question how good of an idea is getting aluminum that hot and any fumes coming off that hot aluminum was from a health standpoint.
Not to mention that wrapping wood in aluminum foil and then putting it into the SDHD was minimally effective.
Some may have better luck with burning wood in it than I did.
After experimenting with both it and a smoke tube, I prefer a smoke tube to it.
A smoke tube in my RT590 loaded with good quality pellets such as A-Maze-N and running Lumberjack in the hopper, or even ground up to sawdust A Maze N or Lumberjack pellets packed into a smoke tube and lit, gives me smoke flavor very near or on par with smoke flavor that I obtain in my WSMs running a good quality lump charcoal such as Kamado Joe Big Block or Jealous Devil lump charcoal and hickory chunks or logs.
I have not tried bark. But I have run pellets through the blender and packed them tight in my A Maze N smoke tubes. I use either a 12 or a telescoping 18 in. I’ve had trouble keeping wood chips lit.
With the pellet dust you have to make sure that it is well lit and that the tube is well ventilated inside your smoker.
But the sawdust burns long and slow and gives a great smoke flavor.
The original poster mentions a
WSM with a BBQ Guru. The below is a picture of my
WSM with BBQ Guru Cyber Q setup.
I run two fans with it and burn the fuel that I describe above. Though in the pics I'm using Royal Oak lump.
I set up my wood and coals as demonstrated below.
Using the smoke tube in my RT590 as I describe above, gets me to a point to where it is difficult, if not impossible for me to distinguish the difference between food cooked on my RT590 and my
WSM.
I feel that the key to using the A Maze N smoke tube, is to use good quality pellets in it, if not outright pellet dust. The dust burns longer and the food is thus exposed to this supplemental smoke for a longer period of time.
smokedaddyinc.com
