Help! No Smoke!

BethV

Premium Member!
Premium Member
Messages
642
Location
Glendale, California
Grill(s) owned
  1. Stampede
  2. Bullseye
For some reason, my 590 is not producing any smoke. I use this very often. In fact last night without any issue. Today I set it to 225. For the first time I got a message that it was offline. I unplugged it plugged it back in and it's fine. Howeverr, at 225 there's absolutely no smoke.

I pulled the racks out I lifted the drip pan and the deflector and there is definitely a fire with pellets in the fire box.

I changed out the pellets today but that's something I do all the time. Vacuumed out the ash in the firebox this morning. I only do that about every 5 cooks or so.

There is definitely something wrong and I don't know how to fix it. I have a very large tomahawk steak on there that I don't want to mess up. Aug rate is 3.0

Any ideas? It is 114 degrees but that should not stop it from smoking.

Thanks!

Thanks!
 
If reduce your temperature a bit lower, do you see smoke? If you are holding temperature OK at 225 and have fire on the pellets, those are good signs.
 
So I removed all of the pellets from the hopper except for enough to just cover the auger. I wanted to be able to see if the pellets were feeding through the auger and they are. I turned everything off and cleaned out the fire box. Something was smoldering in there. No clue what it was but it did not smell like pellet smoke. It smelled burnt. I poked around in there as much as I could and saw pellets dropping down (the grill was not on). Once I was certain that the auger was pulling the pellets, and that they were dropping into the fire box, I added more pellets to the hopper but did not fill it. Turned it on. Checked the fire box and there's a normal fire. And the pellets were dropping. Running at 225, still no smoke. Very odd.
 
So I removed all of the pellets from the hopper except for enough to just cover the auger. I wanted to be able to see if the pellets were feeding through the auger and they are. I turned everything off and cleaned out the fire box. Something was smoldering in there. No clue what it was but it did not smell like pellet smoke. It smelled burnt. I poked around in there as much as I could and saw pellets dropping down (the grill was not on). Once I was certain that the auger was pulling the pellets, and that they were dropping into the fire box, I added more pellets to the hopper but did not fill it. Turned it on. Checked the fire box and there's a normal fire. And the pellets were dropping. Running at 225, still no smoke. Very odd.
@Beach Bum I've taken it to 200 and no smoke. It's hard to keep it at that temp work this heat.
 
Oh gosh that's a stinker. I was hoping for you there would be some smoke that low. It is pretty darn hot in L.A. It's even 100 degrees at our place. I had to dial down my minimum from 6.5 to 3.5 to maintain the 200 degrees I'm at right now.
 
Can you verify that your fan running? Since you have fire your igniter is working
 
Was it a new bag of pellets? If so maybe wrong pellets got put in the bag at the manufacturer. Maybe heating pellets. Just trying to think of something.
 
Was it a new bag of pellets? If so maybe wrong pellets got put in the bag at the manufacturer. Maybe heating pellets. Just trying to think of something.
@charlesrshell yes. Both bags were new. I even put some into the firebox to see if they would ignite and they did but they did not smell like smoke nor did they give off smoke. These are two separate bags from lumberjack that I mixed. I had no idea they make pellets to just heat up and not smoke.
 
I like @charlesrshell idea. I would think it has something to do with the pellets. I didn't know they make heating pellets either. Maybe just a bad batch.
I am new to the pellet world but I am pretty sure there are heating pellets and cooking pellets. Two different breeds. @Mastertech59 help help. Good idea, could be a bad batch too. Help everyone. Is there a way to tell if you have a bad batch of pellets? Some kind of smell test!!
 
Amazing. No smoke flavor but the meat itself is amazing.
 

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WOW they look amazing. Too bad about the lack of smoke smoke. Hopefully customer service will be able to help you figure that out. Then you’ll have to try it again.
 
Smoke is a product of incomplete combustion, which is why lower temps usually mean more smoke with pellets. If you're already set for a low temp I'm not sure what else to say. You should still have combustion gasses and some particles although not what you expect.
 
Smoke is a product of incomplete combustion, which is why lower temps usually mean more smoke with pellets. If you're already set for a low temp I'm not sure what else to say. You should still have combustion gasses and some particles although not what you expect.
@mooncusser2k. It was hard to hold the temperature to 225. It ranged from 225 to 265 at any given time. I always see smoke at 250 to 265. Any higher, not so much. The meat had a very slight smoke note. Thing like mesquite normally gives off. Definitely not what I am used to.

There's something off here but I just don't know what. I was able to keep the temperature around 200-210 for a while while I was monitoring it. No smoke.
 

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