New to pellets with a question

[scooter]

Have you checked to see if anything is obstructing your chimney?
Also, you don't need to set your chickens out for 2 hours before cooking them. I go right from the fridge to the cooker.

 

[dbleyepatches]

Have you checked to see if anything is obstructing your chimney?
Also, you don't need to set your chickens out for 2 hours before cooking them. I go right from the fridge to the cooker.

The chimney is obstruction free, I did check that. 2 hours set out is not normally what I do, but I wanted to see if it was the cold moist chicken that was allowing the soot to stick to it.

 

[scooter]

Curious, how does the smoke coming out of your cooker smell? Does it smell sweet and pleasant with a blueish appearance or does it smell heavy and laden with tar with a brownish yellow appearance? Also, are you getting any sticky tar like substance on the inside of your smoker?

 

[scooter]

Also, if you are in northern CA I would be willing to come over to your home to observe your cooker in action and possibly determine what is going on. I provide that service to the folks at MAK Grills when they have owners with problems in NorCal that MAK Grills have exhausted their abilities to troubleshoot over the phone.
If you don't live in NorCal I would imagine there are members of this forum who do live near you who would be willing to assist you. That's what we do here, help each other.

 

[scooter]

Sorry, reread through your posts and see you live in Nebraska

 

[dbleyepatches]

The smoke that comes out of the chimney is pretty light and blue in color. It doesn't have a nasty smell to it but pellet grills are completely new to me. It is similar to my charcoal grill but again a little different. There is a lot of moisture that comes out of the chimney and this collects on the ran cap and drips down on the shelf which is a little annoying but not a deal breaker. The same thing that is on the food is what is left inside the grill. It is an ultra fine dry soot, like talc powder only black.

I appreciate your willingness to help. Maybe I will be able to purchase a MAK someday, but it's still someday for now.

 

[scooter]

Hmm, beginning to suspect the pellets have a high moisture issue. I use the GMG Premium pellets a lot and have not had that issue.
Have you tried a different brand?


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[dbleyepatches]

I have not used any other brand. I have used two different types of GMG pellets purchased from different dealers. The control boards are on back order so who knows when they will show up. Considering returning the grill and trying to get my money back.

 

[scooter]

If the two dealers you've purchased pellets from have not had anyone else report the same issue you're having then it's probably not the pellets.

 

[dbleyepatches]

I haven't update this thread in a while but I have a whole bunch to tell. We continued to have problems with all three of the GMG that my family purchased. Mainly on poultry but we did have intermittent problems with other foods too. Green Mountain did replace one of the grills but it made no difference, the new one was just as bad.

The company acted like they were trying to help in the beginning and told us several times that they would "do whatever it takes" to make this right including a refund. Well.... they did end up refunding our money but it was a huge fight to get that done. There customer service is horrible and I would not even buy their pellets at this point.

We tried everything to get the grills to work from software updates, board replacements, and even blower fan changes but in the end nothing worked. It sounds like this is a pretty wide spread problem according to the regional rep. but the big wig at Green Mountain said we were the only people in the country that he knew was having this problem.

Buyer Beware when dealing with Green Mountain.

 

[Kite]

Sorry to hear about your problems, but thanks for sharing! I have personally had a very similar response from another manufacturer about a different problem - "We have never heard of that problem, it must just be you". It finally blew up on the forums and turned out it was a wide spread problem that everyone with the same kind/vintage of grill was experiencing. That was what finally got a solution coming.

 

[scooter]

I hope you're not sworn off pellet cookers Daniel! You started with an entry level grill maker that has a loyal following but your experience was not a good one and I understand your apprehension with further dealings with GM.
I hope you give another manufacturer the opportunity to change your perception of pellet smoking for the better.