stick burner flavor

ok here's how i do it and it works equally well in my sm150.
dead cold meat into dead cold smoker. internal meat temp is 32f or lower.
pellets used are bbqersdelight pecan blend.
controller setting is smoke for 2 hours
after 2 hours raised to 180 and an auxilliary pellet pouch placed on top of fire pot.
after 2 more hours temp raised to 225 and auxilliary pellet pouches renewed at approximately 4 hour intervals.
no foil is ever used at anytime.
no wood chunks are ever used
hope it helps

Jack -- Could you please translate this into Smokette lingo. I think I've got it but want to make sure.

Thanks!

Well we're now into "smoke theory 101"

How many smokes have you done? I think yours is pretty new isn't it.

Well if whole chunks of wood aren't getting you what you want, then little pouches of pellets aren't going to do any better. Done both methods and I get more "smoke" from the wood.

Smoke "flavor" is subjective. You think it's perfect and someone else thinks it's oversmoked.

One of the issues would be how fast the pellets are burning. There is a reason there is little ash, they burn too quick.

To get more smoke you need it to smolder more (basically create an Inefficient fire). If the added wood, which works fine for me, doesn't work with you, you'll need to create more smolder.

As Jack points out, think about the temp of the meat and the temp of the smoker. Hot and fast at 325 or 275 won't give the pellets a ton of smoke, compared to a lower setting as the wood is just burning too hot and too fast.

while new I've probably put about 4 cases of brisket through it already. In my offset I start and end between 200&250; I've been doing the smoke setting on the fec and then switching to the mark above 180 (200?) which puts me around 220-240 until it's time to pull the brisket.

I'm using a mix of oak and mesquite pellets.

Now one way I can immediately tell a difference is that a brisket coming off the fec and sitting in the kitchen doesn't smell anything like the one that comes off the offset. The only way I can describe it is a cleaner smelling hunk of beef.

BTW, it's not as if I'm not enjoying the brisket off the fec. But I have several customers that have a specific taste in mind (heavy smoke) who immediately new I had changed something when I gave them a pellet brisket.

So I'm gonna just keep trying.

And while it's on my mind, I've never liked baby backs on the offset because they pick up way too much smoke. Yet the ones off the fec are the BEST baby back ribs I have ever made (also suggesting some difference in smoke quality). I'm a little biased since I'm in love with SkippyP's rub & sauce, but without a doubt I love ribs on the fec100.

I have the same feeling about my Smokeete 009. Just something not the same as the offset. Not bad, just different !

Hey there FWS- I'm down in Pearland. stop by if you want to see the fec in action! ...or the big Gator Pit, for that matter.

skip,
try this as it took me quite a while to get the smoke taste that i was after. you will need to try pellets from different manufacturers as they all use a different blend. most use a high btu wood like oak or alder as a base and then blend in flavor wood. mesquite is already a high btu wood and maybe you can find 100% mesquite pellets. barring that another idea might be to back off the oak and up the mesquite until you hit the right ratio.
if you do go with the auxillary pouches make sure that you use 100% "flavor pellets". these are made from 100% of what ever wood they say they are and i apologize for ommitting that in my previous post as it will make quite a difference as smokin okie pointed out.
jack

hey thanks. I've only used the wood pellets from CS which I assume are basically traeger pellets. I've yet to try any of the flavor pellets.

at least the learning curve tastes good!

wheelz,
ok for the electric translation. in the sm150 prior to bbqersdelight coming out with smoke stixs i used the same pecan pellet mix that i use in the fec100. i would make pouches from aluminum foil (ez to do, take a peice of foil,fold in half,put the fold line next to your tummy,fold the left side over bout an inch,fold the right side over bout an inch,pellets go in the top and then fold that over bout an inch,take a toothpick make one small hole and that pouch goes into the woodbox. takes longer to type than do). my pellets i weighed out for 4 ounce proportions and i would just make enough of them for the estimated cook time. in the sm150 i would replace these bags everytime i jumped the heat up and then at 4 hour intervals. no that i use smoke stixs i just go two 2ounce pieces of oak to one 2 ounce piece of pecan and follow the same format as the pouches. to be honest the stixs are more time effiecent but running both an fec and sm the pouches reduce inventory.
hope it helps some
jack

skip,
no problem. i used the trager pellets when i 1st got my fec. brisket had the oddest aftertaste. nothing nasty just weird to my tongue. i found out at that time the base for their pellets was alder and that's when a lightbulb went off in my head so i called candy sue at bbqer's. best call i ever made!!! taste was where i wanted it and she sure has given me a lot of tech tips (like the smoke stixs i use in the sm150 now)
good luck and you are right, the worst i ever ate from my smokers was good
jack

Wheelz,I'll drop in here, since I had a smokette for a half dozen years,and my boys are still hauling it around the cattle farms in pickups.

Now from our conversations in the past,I know you to be a fine cook.

There are a lot of fine comp cooks that cook on charcoal,with a little wood added at judicious times.



Before I'd get too sophisticated,I'd run that smokette like Donna's family designed it.

Set your smokette at about 170º and get about 8 oz of hickory to smokin'.

Toss your big hunks of cold meat in and shut it up.

Run it about four hrs,before you kick it up to 225º.

After about 8 hrs,flip the meat and add another 4-6 oz hickory.

Foil it ,as soon as it comes out of the cooker.

I suspect you'll have too much smoke,even if clean.

I'd guess you'll cut it back some next time.

Just my $0.02

quote:

Originally posted by prisonchef:
1st got my fec. brisket had the oddest aftertaste. nothing nasty just weird to my tongue.

OMG! would you characterise it as a somewhat 'jerky' flavor? cause that's what comes to mind- that slightly sweet flavor that beef jerky has. not enough to detract, but it's noticeable to me...

Wow! So many good idias here. It's enough to confuse an old man like me. I agree with some of the stuff all of you are saying. Fact is if you put the brisket in cold (Jack), run it at smoke for 4 hours (Tom), and then kick it to 250, you will produce a product that will win much of the time against the stick burners in major contests. Is it better...I don't know or care, as long as the judges like it and I take home the money.
In my mind it's a none issue.
Bill
As DW says"Thats my story an Im stickin to it."

And you have been taking home enough money here lately!

except I'm not competing, I'm catering. Now I'm not tryin to be argumentative, but the basis of the post was that there's a flavor my customers have come to expect that I've yet to reproduce in the fec. and maybe I never will, but this seemed like the best place to ask for help.
I got a call into Candy so maybe come next week I'll have me some 100% oak or mesquite pellets to play with.
I'm sure appreciative of all the replies!

If I get down to Pearland, I will surely give you call !

Sorry guy. I didn't read close enough. I hope you find the taste you are looking for in your brisket.
Bill

Skippyp,
Just went to your web site. I'm impressed, looks like you have found the winning combination. Here's wishing you continued success in your business.
Bill

I understand that you may be trying to duplicate that flavor but let me ask you this, would it be a problem if it is better then what you were serving? Lots of folks are finding that their customers really like the flavor not being so harsh and lingering like an offset tends to do. It alows a better blend of flavor on the pallet and no one thing over powers another.

skip,
ya kind of. it wasn't a bad taste just an odd taste. fast eddy sells pellets a lot of guys swear by and there are man other manufacuters besides bbqer's. i just stick with them because candy sue helped us so much in the early days but fast eddy has a product that guys swear by so look around and experiment. buy a 1 dollar notebook and just write everything down till you hit the taste you want. saw you cater and that is why i HAVE to make my sm150's match the fec100 in taste. took awhile but is easy to do now thanks to the notes
jack

Maybe I'll address all of this in one long, post:

When I caught the bbq bug many years back it was always propane and woodchips or charcoal. Now that I live in the heart of Texas, I was cooking with all wood. I started with hickory because the restaurants back home always used it.
Now hickory down here is like gold bricks. So when I went from cooking for us to cook for others, I rapidly had to find a replacement. so I started cutting the hickory with oak and I was okay with that. Then I replaced the hickory with mesquite (cause it was even cheaper). I realized that I really liked the oak-mesquite combo. Now I've been on that setup for about 3 years.
Now I'm a novice pellet head. So in my naivete I assumed that 100% wood and oak pellets means 100% oak. Same for mesquite. Obviously I was being dumb. Candy straightened me out today and explained the base wood usage and the variability be region (in short). So I'll try their pellets, too since they use oak as the base (meaning mesquite pellets would be oak&mesquite instead of alder&mesquite). I have high hopes this will solve my brisket puzzle and I'm looking forward to how rubs and chicken taste, too.
Which about summarizes it for everyone. I've certainly bought off on ribs using my existing pellets, and it will take a lot to move me away from those. I guess what I'll end up having is pellet blend 1 for ribs, blend 2 for brisket, blend 3 for chicken, blend 4 for pizza, and so on! Just when I though I could decrease the space consumed by the woodpile! now I got a pellet pile!

I do appreciate everyone's responses and patience. It's simply in my nature to question everything to better understand. I think I would even drive Alton Brown crazy! I know everyone is deeply invested in their bbq- being cookers or OEM, or vendors, and so on and I hope my comments and suggestions are taken as simply ideas and thoughts and questions by someone wanting to make the best of what he's got. Ya'll don't know me, but you'd certainly know if I was unhappy with the fec- and thus far I'm 98% perfect (I gotta install the new temp probe for that last 2%!)

Skippy,
I haveb't done that well in competition with chicken, Bill has tried his best with me, but our customers really like pecan smoked. I've used different wood pellets, only from BBQERS and the pecan is the winner as far as sales go.
Best of luck.
Peggy