Hmmmm, pellet consumption issues generally revolve around 2-3 areas.
1. type of pellet: The various brands of pellets all have different BTUs. Even amongst the BBQ'r delight pellets, that 1/3 flavor wood makes a difference between the different flavors. If you are using a pellet that is 100% flavor wood... and it is apple for example... your BTUs will be much lower than BBQ'r Delight Apple pellets which use a blend with Oak for BTUs. So burning Pellet A vs. Pellet B, with everything else being equal, will show a different volume of pellets used.
So far we have only used BBQ'r delight Hickory and Cherry... I don't really know anything about the pellets (haven't taken the time to read up on them yet), the Cherry gave us 2.4something/per hr at 225-250 for 17 hours, and the Hickory was 2.3/per hr 7 hrs at 275
2. Airflow - if you are having poor airflow; either poor convection in the cooker, or poor airflow around the pellets, either will change your consumption to get temps right. If pellets are not burning at optimal conditions, it will take more to maintain temp "x". (also, are the pellets compact and hard or loose/soft) makes sense, as far as hard vs loose/soft, I'll have to claim ignorance... we just opened the bags and dumped them in the hopper...
3. Amount of food in cooker: this has a couple effects. #1. Too much food in cooker restricts airflow, restricted airflow can product irradic cooking results (in any kind of cooker, not just pellet) #2. A lot of cold food, will require more pellets to bring the temp back into range. that recovery is much different if I have 5 kabobs on the bottom rack... or 4 butts and a brisket loaded in. Think back to the high school science class experiments with Entropy. Same thing going on here in the cooker. #3. Volume of food can put it in touch with a probe, or reduce airflow around a probe, causing readings to be lower... and thereby increasing fuel consumption to get to the set point.
I don't think we've put too much in the cooker yet, our biggest smoke was the 4 pork butts, which I tried to keep at least 6" away from the pit temp probe at the back.
Not sure which elements are playing into your issue, but I have cooked on Traegers, Country Smokers, FE Grills, MAK Grills, and (IPT, Blazin, and GMG at least for testing purposes also) currently cook on Yoders (and am sponsored by them for my comp cookers). And in general, all the things above apply... the same basic tenants apply for all the cookers. On a stick burner, if you cook with all apple, you will use alot more fuel than if you cook with oak.... exponentially more food than if you cook with something like Hedge. Cleaner the burn, the less fuel you use. appreciate your expertise! we're definitely newbies at this whole smoking thing! We've just been a "gasser" family at home, and a charcoal family while camping
Pellet type or a Fan issue is where I would check first. From there, faulty thermocouple? Having cooked over 1000hrs in the Yoders, It's a pretty safe bet you should even out to around 1.5 lbs/ hr. If you cook hotter, you will use more. I do a lot of cooking in the 300-350 range, and burn closer to 2/lbs an hour when I do that. At full bore, wide open (crank it on up so you are runnin' 600) your consumption will go up another 1/2lb. or more, depending on how much you are leaving your lid open. I grill on it all the time, and H1 to 350, is about 18 minutes, I grill off dinner, then shut it down, and in that fashion, consumption is just under 2/lbs an hour. It is rarely on longer than an hour when grilling, however, I would expect it to use less to maintain that temp once we have gotten there. That is using Pecan or Sugar Maple BBQr's Delight pellets, on my covered patio, with moderate temps. (think 70's).
That's our hope, that it would settle down and we'd start seeing around 1.5lbs hr. Thanks for the tips
Our 6.5 hour smoke at 275 yesterday went through 14.75lbs of BBQ'r delight Hickory pellets, which comes out to about 2.3 lbs/ hr. The only thing with that smoke, is that it ran out of pellets around 4.5 hours in and we had to restart it which may account for a bit higher usage.... I may just stop in at ATBBQ and chat with them, it might be faster than waiting on emails
Just let Yoder help you out on the pellet consumption issue.
Others that have had high pellet consumption on their YS640 got it fixed with a firmware update and fan change. Not saying that is your problem but Yoder will get it taken care of for you. They are good folks
Thanks for the advice meube! They do seem like good folks, Don himself delivered our smoker last week. As far as I know we're on the latest firmware U25. I'm probably going to just stop in an chat with them this week. Seems easier than waiting on emails, LOL.
Best not to try and diagnose a problem here. Keep us updated though. It is helpful for others looking for advice.
Will do, I myself turn to forums for advice on all sorts of things, and love that people document problems/fixes for others to find! (We even run a few forums ourselves, so I know all the work involved, and really give a big thanks to everyone here who gives of their time so the rest of us can learn to make good BBQ!)
