whole lotta heat and no smoke???

[grogger27]

Good day all,
I recently tried using my MES to smoke some sausage. I heated the smoker up to around 200'F and added some pellets to the tray. I then continued to heat it up to create smoke but 2 hours went by and no smoke. I eventually gave up. We went over to a friends place and used his smoker.
Could the reason I got no smoke is because of the pellets or has any one else had this trouble?
Greg

 

[walking dude]

did you SMELL a smokey oder?

if you can smell it.......then you will/are fine

 

[grogger27]

I'm sure we smelled something smoky about 10 minutes in but then it quit. I expected once I could smell the smoke the visible smoke would appear. When it never showed up it brought concern. I even maxxed out the temp to 270'F before we gave up. Never seeing any smoke and only smelling it for a short period.
I thought after my origanal post that the first time I did use it, I used regular wood chips. After almost 2-3 hours of smoking my turkey I added wood pellets and they smoked as well. Do you think they smoked because there was already hot ash bed for the pellets to sit in? If so maybe I should be smoking with wood chips before I use pellets or even just get out of using pellets all together.
Greg

 

[pitrow]

given such high temps, you might have caught the pellets on fire, instead of just smoldering.

 

[grogger27]

I tried the hi temps to just get something going on with the pellets.

 

[deadeye126]

i agree with pit you burned the pellets up your temp is too high

 

[walking dude]

i would just get away from using pellets........chips and chunks.......

 

[corky]

After some difficulty getting my new MES to create smoke I switched to dry chips and started them smoking (burning) with a small torch before i closed the unit. Then when it was time to add new chips via the feed tube they smoked on thier own.

Corky

 

[bwsmith_2000]

Chips and Chunks is the answer. They are plentiful and so simple to use. Good Luck. Just remember ...... THIN blue smoke. Don't let it billow white etc. Like someone else said, if you can smell it, that will work. Lots of people preburn their wood and that's the way we did it when I was a youngster. We started one fire (the burn fire) and then transferred some of the coals to the smoke or cook fire. While the coals are working, we would feed more wood into the burn fire so that we could refresh the smoke or cook fire when necessary. The coals that were transferred to the cook fire gave off very little smoke. But man did it produce flavor. Until a good bit later in life, I didn't know you could make Q any other way.

 

[davenh]

Sounds like your pellets burn to quick.

I use small chunks in my MES, 1"X1"x2"L. I also toss in a couple charcoal briquettes (broken in half) to start while the MES preheats, then half of one each time I add a chunk. I find the charcoal keeps the smoke more consistant when the heater shuts down after reaching the control set point. Plus it helps with getting a smoke ring.

 

[ne.hunter]

Did you look in the tray to see if you had ashes or if they were still in the tray?

 

[grogger27]

It was still pellets after two hours.

 

[kookie]

Sounds like you need to go to just using chips...........I believe thats what the MES was designed to use............

 

[dave lee]

Make sure you are installing the chip tray properly. My MES came with a deformed tray, and the lower tab/reflector/whateveritis was bent up so it installed above the burner. It reflected the heat down, away from the chips, and prevented them from smoking.

After bending the tray back into shape, it worked perfectly.

If I am not making any sense, I can take some pictures later and try to post them.