Smoke Daddy Big Kahuna - Am I doing it wrong?

Confused

Member
Messages
10
Grill(s) owned
  1. Stampede
Howdy Folks,

New to using pellet grills but I have been enjoying my 590. I cook mostly at 225 degrees and have been satisfied with the results most of the time. A couple of times though I have been disappointed that the smoke flavor is lacking and the meat - butts and ribs - doesn't get that good mahogany color. I installed the Big Kahuna as kind of an insurance policy.
I'm using pecan, apple or cherry wood chips - whatever is available at Home Depot. Seems I read on the website or maybe saw on YouTube that one burn should produce a couple of hours of smoke. Mine acts like a chimney charcoal starter though. It produces a heck of a lot of smoke and burns through a full cylinder in about 30 minutes or less despite whatever speed I set the air pump - or even if I turn it off. It's still not bad but with that fast of a burn it produces a ton of smoke of the type that purists call acrid. Account that I only let it burn through no more than three fillings. It still does the trick and gives the grill a good head start. Am I missing something though on how to keep the chips smoldering instead of them becoming fully involved immediately? Thanks for any advice.
 
That definitely doesn't sound right, but you might want to check out some videos to make sure your setting it up correctly, or ping smoke daddy about it.
 
Howdy Folks,

New to using pellet grills but I have been enjoying my 590. I cook mostly at 225 degrees and have been satisfied with the results most of the time. A couple of times though I have been disappointed that the smoke flavor is lacking and the meat - butts and ribs - doesn't get that good mahogany color. I installed the Big Kahuna as kind of an insurance policy.
I'm using pecan, apple or cherry wood chips - whatever is available at Home Depot. Seems I read on the website or maybe saw on YouTube that one burn should produce a couple of hours of smoke. Mine acts like a chimney charcoal starter though. It produces a heck of a lot of smoke and burns through a full cylinder in about 30 minutes or less despite whatever speed I set the air pump - or even if I turn it off. It's still not bad but with that fast of a burn it produces a ton of smoke of the type that purists call acrid. Account that I only let it burn through no more than three fillings. It still does the trick and gives the grill a good head start. Am I missing something though on how to keep the chips smoldering instead of them becoming fully involved immediately? Thanks for any advice.
Glad I saw this question. I have the Bull and started with the HeavyD but ended up going with the magnum PIG cold smoker. Here is how I do it and it gives a nice clean blue smoke. What instructions SmokeDaddy gives are literally all wrong. I'm not sure why they do it that way.

I fill up 75% or more with charcoal and start it in the cold smoker itself. If you have a small chimney though, you could get about 50% to 75% full with charcoal and drop one or two wood chunks on top of that. I don't really use wood chips as those seems to smoother and create more of a white smoke.

Sometimes I have to cut the chunks smaller to fit but chunks(as big as you can fit in there) the better. I have also seen some change the air flow tube to curve to the side to allow bigger chunks.

As far as the air pump setting, I usually set on medium to medium high. The reason why I do that high is because I have my magnum pig on the same side as the smoke stack so I have to push the smoke to the other side to create a reverse flow type of deal. However, you have the 590 so I would think low to medium low would be fine which should allow the smoke output last at least an hour.

As far as reloading, it pends on how it looks. Sometimes I just add more chunks and sometimes I add more charcoal and wood. I believe myself and a few others got the idea of this from the gravity feed charcoal grills where they give a mostly charcoal to wood ratio. Kind of even like if you were using a Weber kettle.

Anyways, hope this works better for you. The key is getting hot charcoals in the canister and putting wood chunks on top of that. So if you start the charcoal in the cainster as I do, get going with a propane torch from the bottom and then turn the pump on high. This method usually takes 20 to 30 minutes to get all the charcoal going. I've thought about getting a small chimney myself but I don't use the magnum pig a ton. I do like it and it is nice to have but I've found great success using a smoke tube with the royal oak charcoal pellets with wood chips mixed in.

Good luck!
 
Kstone, thanks for your reply. This is much more than I had hoped to hear back. Your method makes a lot of sense and I'm certainly going to try it next time.
 
Kstone, thanks for your reply. This is much more than I had hoped to hear back. Your method makes a lot of sense and I'm certainly going to try it next time.
How did this work for you? Just curious.
 
While I have never used a Smoke Daddy Big Kahuna, I have used smoke tubes and other similar smoke generators on occasion. And, I have never had much luck using wood chips; they simply burn too fast. My preference is wood chunks. They just smolder (producing smoke) rather than burn. YMMV
 

Create an account or login to comment

You must be a member in order to leave a comment

Create account

Create an account on our community. It's easy!

Log in

Already have an account? Log in here.

Back
Top