FA+
Shop
My pellet smoker fire and what I learned from it.
7 years ago
I have a Traeger wood peller smoker, which is a barbecue that produces heat and smoke by feeding wood pellets to an igniter. I use it to cook various sorts of meat from jerky to chicken to ribs, salmon, pork shoulders or whatnot. I was smoking some chicken a couple of weeks back when something alarming happened.
First, after two hours of smoking I went and discovered the internal temperature of the chicken was only about 145 degrees, too low to eat. I realized the smoker had stopped producing heat for some reason so I toggled it off and back on. Shortly thereafter the temperature of the smoker started to rise again and that's when the trouble started.
A vast amount of milky white smoke started pouring out of it, far more than I'd ever seen before. I should have realized at this point there was a problem but I shrugged and went back inside. Shortly afterward I heard a dull BOOM and when I went to look, all seemed well. (It wasn't). The white smoke was mostly gone and I went back inside but I was suspicious something was wrong and checked again 5 minutes later to see the smoker internal temperature was almost 400 degrees. When I opened the lid flames poured out and were so intense that even with long grill tongs and an oven mitt I was unable to rescue the chicken. Almost all of it was consumed by the hellish kiln I'd created. I grabbed a fire extinguisher and put out the fire (it took several blasts, it kept flaming up again). The smoker got so hot it peeled some of the high temperature black paint off.
Luckily the smoker still works and after a good cleaning I'm using it again but this is what I learned from the experience:
1. If you don't clean your pellet smoker regularly it can build up ash in the igniter pit, causing flameouts.
2. If your smoker flames out (the fire dies), let it cool, then vaccum all the wood dust and partially burned pellets out before trying to use it again.
3. If you DO just restart it instead of cleaning it, the result can be way too much fuel (partially burned fuel from before the flameout plus a bunch of new pellets from the restart). If this all ignites at once it produces the huge amount of white smoke and THEN the smoke will ignite, producing a blast that on rare occasions will blow the door right off the grill. More often it will just blow the door open and it'll clang back shut, but either way the next thing to happen will be a catastrophic fire that at a bare minimum will consume the meat and may even further damage the smoker.
The lesson to be learned here if you have a pellet smoker is to periodically check the igniter pit to make sure there isn't a lot of wood pellet dust and/or pellets clogging it up. I have a yard sale shop vacuum sitting next to the smoker for the express purpose of vacuuming it out, but I was lazy and didn't clean it often enough. Every smoke is more often than it needs cleaning but do remember to check every so often before smoking. Even a cheap pellet smoker like a Traeger is not CHEAP cheap and you don't want it damaged in a fire, not to mention you might start an even bigger fire if you don't have your smoker on a concrete pad below a metal roof like I do. All I really lost was the remote grill temperate sensor, which was fried by the fire.
So once again, clean your pellet smoker and DON'T casually restart it if it goes out. The smoker you save may be your own. 83
First, after two hours of smoking I went and discovered the internal temperature of the chicken was only about 145 degrees, too low to eat. I realized the smoker had stopped producing heat for some reason so I toggled it off and back on. Shortly thereafter the temperature of the smoker started to rise again and that's when the trouble started.
A vast amount of milky white smoke started pouring out of it, far more than I'd ever seen before. I should have realized at this point there was a problem but I shrugged and went back inside. Shortly afterward I heard a dull BOOM and when I went to look, all seemed well. (It wasn't). The white smoke was mostly gone and I went back inside but I was suspicious something was wrong and checked again 5 minutes later to see the smoker internal temperature was almost 400 degrees. When I opened the lid flames poured out and were so intense that even with long grill tongs and an oven mitt I was unable to rescue the chicken. Almost all of it was consumed by the hellish kiln I'd created. I grabbed a fire extinguisher and put out the fire (it took several blasts, it kept flaming up again). The smoker got so hot it peeled some of the high temperature black paint off.
Luckily the smoker still works and after a good cleaning I'm using it again but this is what I learned from the experience:
1. If you don't clean your pellet smoker regularly it can build up ash in the igniter pit, causing flameouts.
2. If your smoker flames out (the fire dies), let it cool, then vaccum all the wood dust and partially burned pellets out before trying to use it again.
3. If you DO just restart it instead of cleaning it, the result can be way too much fuel (partially burned fuel from before the flameout plus a bunch of new pellets from the restart). If this all ignites at once it produces the huge amount of white smoke and THEN the smoke will ignite, producing a blast that on rare occasions will blow the door right off the grill. More often it will just blow the door open and it'll clang back shut, but either way the next thing to happen will be a catastrophic fire that at a bare minimum will consume the meat and may even further damage the smoker.
The lesson to be learned here if you have a pellet smoker is to periodically check the igniter pit to make sure there isn't a lot of wood pellet dust and/or pellets clogging it up. I have a yard sale shop vacuum sitting next to the smoker for the express purpose of vacuuming it out, but I was lazy and didn't clean it often enough. Every smoke is more often than it needs cleaning but do remember to check every so often before smoking. Even a cheap pellet smoker like a Traeger is not CHEAP cheap and you don't want it damaged in a fire, not to mention you might start an even bigger fire if you don't have your smoker on a concrete pad below a metal roof like I do. All I really lost was the remote grill temperate sensor, which was fried by the fire.
So once again, clean your pellet smoker and DON'T casually restart it if it goes out. The smoker you save may be your own. 83
That change of pressure may then knock enough free for an airflow to fuel the pre-heated wood.
ovo
So besides that, how do you like the smoker?
The smoker isn't bad, it is very reliable with this one exception. Traegers are entry lever pellet smokers and this one cost about eight hundred bucks. Unlike the previous smokers I had it works quite well and makes excellent ribs, smoked salmon, jerky and chicken. It's the pork shoulders that never seem to be smoky enough, but the ratio of surface to volume is low so there isn't a lot of bark to go around. I suspect professional BBQ places inject flavoring into theirs.
Typically people who get smokers get several before they stick with one. My first was a flower pot smoker I made after watching Good Eats and that was a disaster, the hot plate that provided the heat melted and the resulting fire cracked the large pot. Then a charcoal smoker my sister gave me, that didn't get hot enough, then a vertical electric smoker that didn't product enough smoke, and finally this one. Fourth time's the charm. 83
I wonder if something like a Klixon thermostat attached to the outside of the smoker somewhere, a battery, and a loud buzzer (and maybe a blinky light) would be useful. The (fixed) thermostat temperature would have to be high enough to mean "something is *definitely* wrong". The simplest way is to use a close-on-rise thermostat. If you have to make a safety case for it, though, you use an open-on-rise thermostat, plus probably a thermal fuse in series with the thermostat (your hairdryer, clothes dryer, and electric stove are built this way), and then a relay or transistor to invert the signal for the buzzer.
On the other hand, by the time that buzzer goes off, Bad Things[tm] are already happening, and it is probably preferable to stop the Bad Things[tm] earlier than that.
</nerd>
> Every smoke is more often than it needs cleaning but do remember to check every so often before smoking.
Humans are bad at procedures that only happen *sometimes*. If it gets cleaned every time, then you don't have to think about it. :)
Once a month is probably a frequent enough cleaning if you smoke once a week for a couple of hours. I just did a ten hour pork shoulder smoke so it gets cleaned before I used it again. Cleaning before each smoke is not a bad idea though.
And I'm glad you're okay.
Glad you're okay.