Have used BBQers Delight pellets for 4 years. Switched to an IQ4 mid summer and noticed a full burn pot of ash at the end of a 12 hour cook as a normal occurance. This did not seem to affect the performance of the unit. Always cook brisket on bottom two shelves at 250, fat down and foil after 6 hours. Never had a problem with either packers or flats.
Ran out of pellets and instead of ordering pallet of pellets from Candy, as it is end of season, just picked up some Traeger Pecan flavored pellets to use in Nelsonville, OH last weekend.
Followed my usual procedure, pit on at 11 pm, meat on at midnight, CAB 13 pound packer and butt on bottom shelf & 8 pound prime brisket flat & butt on second shelf. Temps looked ok. Went to bed, but checked pit temps at 4 am also have a pit temp monitor with an alarm set for 275. All looked good.
Got up at 6 am to foil brisket and found, to my amazment that the butts were done and the briskets over done with charring on the bottoms and around the edges!! Wrapped in foil with special liquid and placed in cambro.
Briskets required creative trimming to get enough to turn in along with true burnt ends.
Placed ribs on FEC on top two shelves and closely monitored temps.
Two things were noted: 1. larger than normal usage of pellets 2. very little ash in burn pot, no excess ash on bottom and no unburned pellets either.
Question: Am I crazy (don't answer that)or has this happened to anyone else. Best I can surmise is the radiant heat from the heat shield caused the charring and the Traeger pellets burned more efficiently but the box temp never went above the setpoint.
Additional information - outside temperature was in the mid 30's, it rained between 10 and midnight and was overcast the rest of the time with light wind. I run the FEC off an battery/inverter system with the batteries constanly being charged by 110 vac.
Any insight would be appreciated and I will answer any and all questions. Don't get me wrong, I'm just trying to understand what happened and find out if it is normal for different pellets from other manufacturers to have different burn characteristics.
Mack
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