Yoder Smokers Community Forum

Just got mine in yesterday afternoon! Brand new YS640. I did the initial burn-in yesterday and I'm throwing a rack of spareribs on for dinner tonight. I can't wait to see how they come out. Where does everyone usually have the damper set to and why? My other cooker is a BGE, I've never used a pellet smoker before so I'm sure there's going to be a bit of a learning curve.

I cook with the handle pulled all the way out, or pushed back in a few inches. It stays like this all the time.

If you are coming from a BGE, you may need to modify your timings and procedures a little, as the BGE cooks differently that the Yoder. Remember, the Yoder cooks from the bottom up, and the further from the bottom, the cooler the temp. So if you want to cook at 225 on the top rack, you will have to set the cooker to approximately 250 as the top rack is cooler.

Here are a couple of articles that will help: viewtopic.php?f=49&t=1368 and viewtopic.php?f=36&t=1365

Yoder_Herb wrote:I cook with the handle pulled all the way out, or pushed back in a few inches. It stays like this all the time.

If you are coming from a BGE, you may need to modify your timings and procedures a little, as the BGE cooks differently that the Yoder. Remember, the Yoder cooks from the bottom up, and the further from the bottom, the cooler the temp. So if you want to cook at 225 on the top rack, you will have to set the cooker to approximately 250 as the top rack is cooler.

Here are a couple of articles that will help: viewtopic.php?f=49&t=1368 and viewtopic.php?f=36&t=1365

Thank you so much for the timely response!

Your gonna love it. Using a digital thermo like the Maverick really helps to see grate temps. Do the Biscuit Test. Biscuits are cheap and you can see where the cool/hot spots are. For example, I did 9 chickens last weekend for the semi-annual vacupack chicken/make awesome chicken stock and freeze most of it all.

I had 6 on the bottom and 3 on top. Every 40 min or so I rotated them for even cooking. top to bottom left to right. Came out awesome as usual.