PhillySmoke
Member
- Messages
- 18
- Grill(s) owned
- Bull
By way of background, I have a decent amount of experience smoking on charcoal and gas burners (more on charcoal) and have cooked a LOT of shoulders and ribs with pretty much universally positive results. The bull is my first pellet smoker and I am getting some results which don't make sense to me and wanted to solicit the wisdom of this group to see if I can get to the bottom of it.
I think the biggest issue I am seeing is REALLY long cook times with the meat not being great (or in some cases not even good) at the end. For example, on other smokers I have used, I could typically do a rack of babys which fall off the bone in 6 and a shoulder in the 10# range in 12 and have them both be incredible. I typically don't need to foil the butts and pull them at around 205.
On the bull I did a 9.5# shoulder for something like 15 hours at 225 and the internal temp was still in the 180's. This is not the first time this has happened - in fact, I have not been able to get ANY good butts off the bull. Butts have actually gotten mushy after such a long cook with no real bark to speak of.
Ribs the same, I had a rack of babys in the smoker for 8 hours yesterday and they were pretty terrible and nowhere near the doneness that I like. I smoked them at 240.
I get there is some variability in cut of meat but nothing has changed about the way I trim, rub, rest, pull, anything - only thing different is the smoker.
Doesn't make logical sense to me because temp is temp and I know the smoker is pretty close (within a few degrees) of the set point because I also run a Thermoworks Smoke keeping an eye on both the pit and meat temp and it agrees with the Bull probes. Only thing that occurs to me is that the Bull might be really accurate and I was cooking at a much higher temp than I thought I was with other smokers I have owned. Going to try some at a higher temp to explore that theory.
Family also misses the deep smoke flavor but I get that is a "thing" with a pellet smoker and am going to try a smoke tube to get around that.
Another thing that is really weird to me is that I don't get any drippings to speak of. Ribs yesterday had nothing at all on the drip pan. Shoulder had some but nothing at all in the bucket and it pretty much just piled up below the meat.
Things cooked at higher temps (like pork tenderloin) tend to turn out fantastic.
Pellet wise, I am using CookinPellets Perfect Mix in 40# bags.
This turned out to be a longer post than I wanted but wanted to provide as complete a picture as I could.
Really appreciate the time to go through this and any thoughts you might have.
I think the biggest issue I am seeing is REALLY long cook times with the meat not being great (or in some cases not even good) at the end. For example, on other smokers I have used, I could typically do a rack of babys which fall off the bone in 6 and a shoulder in the 10# range in 12 and have them both be incredible. I typically don't need to foil the butts and pull them at around 205.
On the bull I did a 9.5# shoulder for something like 15 hours at 225 and the internal temp was still in the 180's. This is not the first time this has happened - in fact, I have not been able to get ANY good butts off the bull. Butts have actually gotten mushy after such a long cook with no real bark to speak of.
Ribs the same, I had a rack of babys in the smoker for 8 hours yesterday and they were pretty terrible and nowhere near the doneness that I like. I smoked them at 240.
I get there is some variability in cut of meat but nothing has changed about the way I trim, rub, rest, pull, anything - only thing different is the smoker.
Doesn't make logical sense to me because temp is temp and I know the smoker is pretty close (within a few degrees) of the set point because I also run a Thermoworks Smoke keeping an eye on both the pit and meat temp and it agrees with the Bull probes. Only thing that occurs to me is that the Bull might be really accurate and I was cooking at a much higher temp than I thought I was with other smokers I have owned. Going to try some at a higher temp to explore that theory.
Family also misses the deep smoke flavor but I get that is a "thing" with a pellet smoker and am going to try a smoke tube to get around that.
Another thing that is really weird to me is that I don't get any drippings to speak of. Ribs yesterday had nothing at all on the drip pan. Shoulder had some but nothing at all in the bucket and it pretty much just piled up below the meat.
Things cooked at higher temps (like pork tenderloin) tend to turn out fantastic.
Pellet wise, I am using CookinPellets Perfect Mix in 40# bags.
This turned out to be a longer post than I wanted but wanted to provide as complete a picture as I could.
Really appreciate the time to go through this and any thoughts you might have.