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I'm joined by Eric Rowley, owner of the BBQ HQ.

And today we're going to be talking about pellet grills.

some basics and some pro tips, so whether you're brand new to pellet grills or you've had 1 for a long, long time, I think you're going to learn something.

Many of you guys know that I do almost all of my cooking on Offset Smokers, but Eric is kind of a pellet grill expert.

When I've cooked on pellet grills and I have questions, I call Eric and I say, Eric, what do you do about this?

Or how do you recommend going about X, Y, or Z?

And he has a ton of experience, and so I'm gonna lean on his knowledge to teach us all about pellet grills.

So can you give us a little bit of your background with pellet grills?

So I've been around pellet grills for about 15 plus, yeah, 15 years now.

I've competed on them, I've catered on them, I've done a lot of R&D, I don't know how many countless pounds of pellets I've burned through pellet grills, and obviously now that I own a barbecue shop, we get all the questions from beginners, I teach classes on them, lots of discussions, so I kind of know what the new person's running into, and I've developed a lot of different techniques just through a lot of trial and error.

There's no perfect way to do anything, but there's a lot of things that hopefully, what you learn today, that will help you out.

And there's stuff I'm always learning by talking to different people, go, never would have thought about that, and I definitely like to try different things out.

Yeah, and 1 thing I noticed being around the shop for the last week is you guys are out doing service calls.

So you see what things break, you see what things are never needing service and what's kind of problematic for users.

So I think it's really cool to have your perspective on it because you're dealing with multiple different brands and things that customers are running into on a daily basis so you know how to troubleshoot problems they might be having.

Yeah, so there's a lot that we train our sales people and just off of experience exactly like that.

So, Like we're here in Southern California and the last few months, the rain has just been crazy.

So we've gone out and we've cleaned a lot of bad pellets out of hoppers that have been exposed to moisture.

And a fair amount of electronic parts because I mean, they are pretty well sealed.

But again, we had just insane amounts of rain that some of those electronic components get affected, and that's part of it.

The great thing about a pellet grill is it's really easy at the user interface level, but behind the scenes, it's not terribly complicated, but There's a lot of things that got to be in the right place at the right time for things to work.

So they're generally very reliable, but all it takes is 1 little thing to get out of place on like a stick burner where there's really not a whole lot of things that can go wrong with them.

With those variables that make your experience in your cooking life a lot easier, you gotta make sure that all those things are working.

Now, there's some things that if they fail, you're absolutely dead in the water.

There's other things that they fail, figure out ways around that.

If I have problems with a company, I usually won't keep supporting them.

Companies go through good days, they go through bad days, and we'll still see our way through that.

But that being said, if a company isn't gonna step up and support us so that we can take care of the customer, then we're probably not gonna continue the relationship.

These are electronics, so whether it's a $12, 000 Twin Eagle or a 399 Pit Boss from Walmart, they're all electronics, and as well designed and as well manufactured as they are, there is still a chance that there might be an electronic issue with that.

The downside of a stick burner, which I'm a fan of, is that it takes a lot of work to keep them going, you gotta be around the whole time.

But the upside of that is well it's just kind of 2 tubes that got welded together what can go wrong?

You know I mean you can have issues with wood and stuff but in terms of the smoker it doesn't really have moving parts other than doors and you just put fire in there and you put meat in there and you wait long enough for it to cook.

In the pellet grill, you got your basic components are your controller, your auger system, you have a fan and you have an igniter.

It takes all of those to work in, you know, cooperation for you to have proper fire and to do what the smoker or grill needs to do.

Any compromise in any of those, and that's when you start to get your issues.

So 1 of the first things I see is a lot of people buy the pellet grill thinking instantly they're gonna be great cooks and they usually will buy it before they have a big giant event.

It's pretty rare that we have issues, but it seems like the more reliance on that thing absolutely having to work.

And so, hey, I'm gonna invite 60 people over.

I just brought this brand new GMG Jim Bowie.

You're gonna get that 1, that 1 in a hundred that decides that the fan was dead in the box, even though most of these companies test all these components before they go, they bounce down the road, they do whatever.

And sometimes it's a very complicated fix and that we got to go exchange, say like an auger system.

Other times it's just simply a wire that bounces out of place.

If you just bought a pellet grill and you think you're going to go tackle this big giant cook on it and you have no experience with it, please revert to something else.

Get that under your belt because again, you put that importance and have those things in play and you're just opening yourself up to a little bit of liability there that things might go wrong.

As many grills go out of this store, I would say less than

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When you first get the pellet grill, 1 of the things I recommend for my customers on that first fire up, which you have to open up the grill anyways to put pellets in it to prime the auger, is sit there and wait and watch that process so you understand what is going on with that combustion process and the pellets.

So watch those pellets ignite, start to smolder, watch them feed in, and then watch that fire actually ignite.

That way you just have an idea of what's going on underneath the internals of your grill.

And then later on if you have to troubleshoot, it's very helpful that you at least understand what the combustion process of the grill is.

And then yeah, once it fires up, drop your diffuser over and then drip pan into place and burn it off at 450 degrees for an hour or as high as your grill will go and that'll get you on your way to cooking.

Gotcha, so figure out the process so that if anything ever goes wrong, you can identify it.

And I see too a lot of people like if it doesn't fire up, the first thing you want to do is actually open all that stuff up and see what's going on in your fire pot.

Because if it misfired and you have a whole bunch of pellets in there, if that does actually fire off, you can get a smoke explosion because those pellets are so rich, it's creating a ton amount of smoke.

And oftentimes you just look at it, you go, oh, the pellets have overfed, clean it out and watch it, like that initial startup.

Because that's exactly what I do when I go out and I service them.

Okay, let's open this up, let's see what's going on.

And I can usually tell exactly what had happened as soon as I open up and look at that fire pot.

Or my customers will say, send me a picture of that fire pot, and it'll tell me everything that's going on.

So, you know, so again, like, if the grill doesn't fire up, it's really a safety thing.

Make sure you expose that fire pot and see what's going on.

It's full of pellets, clean them out, and start over again and see what's happening.

So besides inviting all your buddies over on the first day you get a pellet grill, What are some other common mistakes that you see people make?

So I think the next 1 after that is people not understanding that these grills, as precise as they are, they have temperature swings.

The controller's actually kind of lying to you a little bit about what temperature is actually going on inside of the grill.

Now, if they're like 50, 60 degrees off, that's 1 thing, and that might happen.

You might have a bad thermocouple or a bad controller that does that.

But the 5 to 10 to 15 degrees difference from what your controller is doing is totally normal.

And I think I heard you say once that some controllers are actually designed to have temperature swings on purpose.

So when the temperature swings, it kind of goes through the different phases of combustion.

So it'll go from smoldering to a free burning, so that free burning has got to do that so it burns the pellets, right?

But as it smolders down, that's what institutes some of that smoke and tries to get a little more smoke flavor in.

So some companies, their fan runs all the time.

Other companies like Green Mountain, Memphis, Pits and Spits, below a certain temperature that fan pulsates and that's to help with that smoke production to create a little bit of a dirty burn which brings our flavor smoke particles over.

If the grill's not clean, so if you get too many ashes in your fire pot, that might prohibit it from starting up.

And leaving those ashes in the fire pot is really corrosive to your igniter.

The other big thing I see is people don't have their drip pans clean.

You know, there's always been like the Ford-Chevy debate, like do you foil a drip pan, do you not, and scrape it.

I tend to lead towards scraping the drip pan and keeping foil off of it.

In fact, there's quite a few manufacturers, so like Yoder, for an example, their tolerances from the drip pan on the side of the cooker are so tight, that foil tends to hang over on the side, it affects airflow, which affects the performance of the grill.

And then there's like GMG, that they actually have a little hole in their drip pan that allows air to go past the thermocouple more accurately, and so a lot of people don't punch a hole in that when they do foil.

So like I said, my preference is to go ahead and scrape when it gets bad.

I do like the specific really thick aluminum, I guess, sheets or foils that are specific for drip pans.

Those do work really well because they're sturdy enough that grease usually doesn't get around and stick, so when you go to pull it off, it comes off in a piece.

The other big 1 is these things are not spaceships, they're not aircraft, they're not total airtight pressurized vessels.

They leak smoke, yoder now comes stocked with a gasket, but you know what?

That positive pressure fan, it's going to push air out of any crevice that it can, and it won't affect things.

So people are often worried about that, and it's not going to affect anything at the end of the day.

So there are a lot of choices people have with pellet grills.

And then there are lots of accessories and there are lots of ways you can spend money on your pellet grill.

So my question for you is, as somebody who sells these grills and accessories, where should people spend money and where should people save money?

So I think if you're gonna save money on a pellet grill is if you're cooking a lot, pellets can actually get pretty expensive.

You and I like knotty wood, but they are an expensive pellet.

So if you're doing a longer cook, you're really kind of at a point of diminishing returns after the first few hours of the cook.

So maybe use a cheaper, you know, something cheaper, like a, I don't know, like a pit boss or like a lumberjack that will carry on through the rest of the cook.

So you're still getting that smoke flavor, but really that first 4 hours to me is where I noticed like, okay, maybe I'll use the expensive pellets.

So again, if you're starting out, you'll get good results, but also as we talk, make 1 change at a time, right?

The other thing that I see is, if your grill has wifi and you're comfortable with using the wifi, I'm a big fan of the fireboards, but there's no reason to go out and spend $250 on a fireboard.

I would say spend that money on a good instant read.

If your grill is already showing you, you know, if you can reliably get from your grill with a leave-in thermometer of where that, you know, what your food temp is doing.

So you covered kind of places where you can save some money, but what are aspects of pellet grills where it's worth investing that extra money?

Is it for thicker metal like people do with offsets or is it a better controller?

Yeah, I mean, that's an interesting conversation.

Like I'm a big believer In pellet grills, you get what you pay for, especially when it comes to American-made products.

Now, I have a little bit of a hard time spending, say, 3 grand on something made in China.

I would say the exception is our upper-end Memphis.

Yes, those are made overseas, but they're just such a well-engineered, those are worth the money.

But if you're in like that 2 to 3 grand range and you're going to spend that money on a foreign-made grill, I think you're better off buying something domestic.

So and a lot of people ask like, well, should I spend that much money out of the gate on a pellet grill?

Well, you know, if it's not hurting your budget, we see, you know, the American-made products are a lot more reliable, they're a lot more consistent, we have fewer issues with them, and usually they have design features that are, you know, quite well, and they're a lot more durable.

That being said, I have Green Mountain Grills that are 10 plus years old, I have Traegers that are almost 15 plus years old that were not made in the US.

And so again, it's always what your budget depends, but that's 1 of the biggest questions we get.

Is it worth it to spend that extra money to buy a Yoder, a Pits and Spits, a Lone Star?

And yeah, if you can afford it, I think you will definitely see a, you know, overall you will be happy with what you get.

You're not making a poor investment because you're getting thicker metal.

All these grills, like all the brands that are painted, there's always been some sort of paint issue on them.

They're smokers, they're not sports cars, you know, show cars.

And, you know, so all in all, like, yeah, I mean, if it fits what you're looking for, you know go for it But I've I rarely see somebody that says man I think I spent too much money on this because again all the American domestic manufacturers I think make a good value Yes, it's expensive but the durability and everything else within the components are definitely worth that extra money.

Gotcha, so if somebody, they make whatever decision on their pellet grill, they take it home, they'll cook something, say they cook a brisket, a

lot of times I get questions from people who have pellet grills and the 2 most common questions I get are how do I get better bark and how do I get better smoke flavor?

Is the the pellet grill expert like what do you usually say when people ask you I'm guessing you had the same questions.

So 1 you're never gonna replicate an offset.

Now, I know there's like, Woodwind Pro is doing a really, really good job.

You know, standalone, Smokefire's always been 1 of my favorites.

The pellets are getting better with flavor.

Pellets are getting better, I know that sounds kind of weird, but they're, you know, we're becoming more accepting of processing the entire tree and more bark, where in the past it was like, ooh, ash and dirty burning is really bad, where now we're coming back realizing that is actually bringing more flavor, more smoke into the pellet cooking.

So you're never, people are constantly chasing.

I probably get that email every day of like, how do I make my pellet grill taste like a stick burner?

You're not, so stop chasing that endeavor.

As far as more bark, for me, I will look at taking it longer through the cook where it might be wrapping longer, but I never wrap off temperature anyways.

If you need to introduce a little bit of sugar, So whether it's through a spritz or just adding a little bit of sugar into your rub, that sugar is really going to help you get that bark.

But through the years, once you kind of figure the process out, it's not that big of a deal.

You just understand, okay, I didn't get enough bark on this, either wrapped too early or I need a little bit more sugar.

So again, make that change the next time and push it through.

So on the competition side of things, pellet grills have won at all the highest forms of competition and I know I've turned out good quality product.

Salt and pepper can be a little tricky, but again, introduce a little bit of sugar in there and that bark starts

So for more smoke flavor, get pellets that are going to produce more smoke flavor, and for the bark, you can do something like introducing sugar into the rub or with a spritz to really allow it to bark up and kind of have the same kind of look that you're after in a stick burner.

Yeah, and I think, you know, and that overall smoke flavor, yes, the pellets do make a big difference in that.

You can do smoke tubes, you can do, you know, there's different concepts of adding smoke to that cooker.

I personally don't care for that flavor of that, but again, it's up to whatever you wanna do.

There's a lot of good options out there to be able to do that.

And speaking of pellets, what's kind of your interpretation of the lay of the land when it comes to the world of pellets.

Because I know that I've used some pellets that I did not like at all.

Didn't think that the flavor was really substantial.

And I've used others when I think, wow, that was really good.

I've seen knotty wood, I've really, really liked.

Lumberjack pellets I've used, I like those.

I've used cooking pellets before and like those And a lot of these were your recommendations of good pellets, but for the viewer, they just got this, you know Awesome pellet grill they want to cook the best food possible What are some reasonable options for them to choose from?

Because 1 of the things I've heard you say before is that some smokers don't like certain pellets.

And what are some maybe common pairings that really don't work?

Yeah, so, well, we'll use knotty wood for an example.

I know we've done a few videos with knotty wood and all of a sudden people are asking, oh I had an issue, so like, yoder and knotty wood don't play together that great.

Reason why, knotty wood processes the entire tree, so you get the bark, you get a lot of that extra that burns dirty, so it gets more ash.

Well, in general, yoders tend to create a little bit more ash, so whether it's a lumberjack, yoder is 1 of those standout ones.

Traegers are usually, they'll run just about anything.

Your Memphis and Twin Eagle, because of the shape of their fire pot, they've gotten better, they've made some firmware changes, but some of those, like even a lumberjack.

So, like the lumberjack lineup, anything other than 100% oak has bark in it.

So they'll use oak as a base, which is debarked, but then the flavor will come from bark.

That is, you know, say it's not 100% hickory pellets, it's gonna be an oak base with, say like 40% hickory, that hickory is not gonna be debarked.

So those will create, so, you know, years back, Memphis has had a few issues in their, again, their reiteration.

A few changes to the fire pot, they've done it.

Firmware changes, they've been able to, for it not to really be an issue anymore.

But again, if you start, you know, if it starts becoming uncomfortable where you're seeing a really dirty fire pot, then maybe switch pellets.

But the larger part of that too is I see a lot of the service calls that we get, there was moisture in the hopper.

We see more like with the big box stores, a lot of times they store pellets outside, so you buy a bag of pellets and they're already compromised.

So not necessarily you're getting a bad pellet because it's manufactured as a bad pellet, it's just the handling practices along the way that lead to those issues.

So, and that part of it is also important too, if you reach into the hopper, Like every time I got to cook, I just open the hopper to make sure that the pellets look good.

Reach your hand in there and stir around, make sure that pellet has that good outer kind of shiny crust on it.

Because when they start to break down, they dull down greatly and you can kind of see the individual fibers in there, or the pieces of sawdust basically start to poke out and that means that you're getting moisture and that might start jamming up in your auger and causing issues.

Gotcha, so to keep it simple for the viewer, what are, could you give me like 5 kind of premium pellets that you'd say, these are good pellets, find out if it works in your smoker and you could use that as, you know, the jumping off point into pursuing other kinds of pellets.

Yeah, my go-to, yeah, a lot of these we carry here at the shop, so like again, knotty wood is 1 of my favorites.

Cooking pellets, as you mentioned, Lumberjack, they're top quality pellets.

And then I'd say like below that, you're start getting like the GMG pellet is a really, really good pellet.

But I wouldn't put them quite at that top, top tier.

And actually, I mean, the GMG Goldblend is our best selling pellet at this shop.

So that should speak a little bit of volume to that.

You also got Poppa's, it's kind of a new 1 to the scene.

Barbecue is a light, I actually put them in a top tier.

And then you have some real crazy ones out there like Shoe-Ping's 100% mesquite.

So I mean, I really in the last few years haven't come across bad pellets.

You just have to find what works for you.

I will say a lot of the pellets you buy in the big box stores don't produce as much BTUs as like what you're gonna find from like a more specialty store like us.

So Pit Boss tends to use a little softer wood, Traeger uses a little softer wood, and there's a definite difference in the amount of consumption between those, and say like 100% oak lumberjack, which is a very efficient pellet.

For the people who are kind of new to pellet grills and they want to have success with their cooks, because I know for me, I was smoking things for months before I produced anything that was even close to halfway decent.

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A Beginner's Guide to Pellet Smokers