My 640 went out on its own after about 6 hours at 170 degrees. Started with a clean firebox. No wind and never opened the lid.. No drippings.
Started right back up. Anything I should keep an eye on or just can happen at low temps?
Are both fans running? Do you have the chimney blocked in some way? Are all the vents on the pellet hopper open and not blocked in any way? What brand and flavor of pellets are you using? Have you refit the burn grate to the firepot? Did you plug the power cord into the cooker before cooking or was it already plugged into power?
I don't usually cook that low so can't help there but I highly doubt it went out because of the set temp. Were pellets still getting to the auger and hopper? I have occasionally experienced burnout early on when pellets were sticking to the sides of the hopper. A bit of car wax reduced the friction sufficiently that I've never had the problem again since, except for when I've let it run dry on pellets. If it wasn't pellets, I'd also make sure your power cord was tight into the smoker behind the hopper. I also had an issue once when the cord got loose after moving the 640 around on my patio.
With these grills, it seems like it's usually something pretty simple. In my case it's almost always operator error! 
. Sure the guys here will help you get to the bottom of it quickly.
Good luck!
I'll try to answer all questions in one post, but thanks to both of you for responding. The cord was unplugged from last nights ribs. I cleaned the pit and firebox and no I do not have the newer firebox. The chimney is not blocked nor does there there seem to be any obstruction in the hopper or the vents. Plenty of pellets and I was using some pacific pellets that came with the unit I bought about a month ago. I have used probably 60 lbs without any problems and they are definitely not wet. The unit was in cool down mode when the pellets stopped dropping so that and the fact that it started back up tells me it shouldn't be electrical. Like I said little to no wind and everything else seemed to be status quo until I went out there to see it had dropped to 130 degrees as I had not checked for an hour or so.
The only thing I cannot vouch for is the two fans. I have since turned it off but am getting ready to do a short cook tonight so I will check. Even so I would think it should run with one fan but...
thanks again,
Bill
The pacific pellets are alder based and not oak based like BBQr's Delight. What does this mean? Alder, while consider a hardwood, is a "soft" hardwood, and is a member of the birch family. Alder is a low BTU wood, even lower BTU than apple, and burns quickly. A cord of oak wood weighs almost twice as much as a cord of alder. A cord of apple wood weights over 1000 lbs. more than a cord of alder wood. The takeaway from this is that you will use more pellets to get the same amount of heat over a specific time period, when compared to an oak based pellet. This also means that the fire in the burn grate will need to be bigger, which means more ash. As a side note, is it better to pay $.40 a pound for alder based pellets, or $.60 a pound for oak based pellets, when you use a larger quantity of alder based over a specific time period?
When cooking at lower temperatures (below 190 degrees), the importance of having everything clean and fitting correctly in the fire systems is very important. The burn grate MUST fit correctly in the firepot at the lower cooking temperatures, so the cooker can maintain an hot efficient fire. I check the burn grate fitment in the firepot before every cook in all of the pellet cookers I use and maintain. This is a Yoder Smokers best practice.
Do I have an exact answer to what happened, no, as I was not there. What would my guess be? The burn grate was not fitting correctly in the firepot, allowing the combustion air from the fans to escape instead of being forced through the burn grate to maintain a hot efficient fire, and coupled with the lower BTU pellets being used, the controller was feeding a larger amount of pellets into the firepot and snuffed out the fire.
Let me dispel a pellet cooker myth, as it pertains to any of the Yoder Smoker pellet cookers; Cooking at a lower temperature does not enhance the smoke flavor/content in anything that you are cooking. All it does is add time to the cook. This is NOT true for some other brands of pellet cookers. The Yoder pellet cookers were designed to provide a high level of quality blue smoke at all cooking temperatures. This is why the pellet consumption is a little higher that some competitors. Yoder pellet cookers are smokers, not ovens, like some of the others that tout their pellet efficiency. My advice, there is no need to cook at a lower temperature and then raise the temperature to finish the cook, to get a desired outcome. I have tested this with side by side cookers and with taste testers, and they could not pick out any differences. If you want a heavier smoke flavor, use a supplemental smoke generator. I do not personally use these, as I do not like the acrid taste of the creosote that they add to the meat. After using one, and seeing the thick creosote residue left inside the cooker, I decided that I didn't want that residue on the neat, and I didn't like the taste. To each their own.
Great post Herb. Just to be clear, when talking about creosote from supplemental smoke generators, are you including pellet-burning tube smokers like many of us use for cold smoking? Guessing no but wanted to be clear.
Thx
TJ
P.s. I believe Traeger pellets are alder-based too, no? So presumably they would be problematic at low temps too.
Yes. Clean your cooker lid, and cook with the tube/box/strainer, etc. When the cook is done, look at the lid directly above where the tube/box/strainer, etc. was. Make your own decision from what you see or don't see. Some people smoke on a stick burner with white puffy smoke and think it is the best. When they try to use a pellet cooker, that only puts out blue smoke, they hate it because they are used to tasting the impure burned wood solids and creosote that is deposited on the meat by the white puffy smoke. What comes out of the tube/box/strainer, etc., is somewhere in between the perfect blue smoke and the white puffy smoke. Just not for me.
Thanks Herb,
Interesting and helpful. Honestly I have no intention of buying the same pellets as I have indeed notice much of what you stated. The ash build up seems a lot higher and the consumption does seem pretty high. I will check the firepot today. I do have the old style as my pit was built a couple weeks before the upgrade...would you suggest I buy the new one?
Also I did grill last night at 350 for 45 minutes without any problem. I did have one anomaly, but will chock that up to pilot error. Other than that just about everything I cook tastes better than ever and each one seems better than the last. Very happy all the way around...just thought it was unusual for the pit to shut down on its own.
The old style burn grate works fine, you just need to keep it fitting tightly in the firepot.
Yoder_Herb wrote:What comes out of the tube/box/strainer, etc., is somewhere in between the perfect blue smoke and the white puffy smoke. Just not for me.
Thanks Herb--love that your replies are always direct and well thought out. Have you devised any way to do cold smoking w/ your pellet smoker that resolves this issue? Wondering if it would cause a back-pressure issue/problem to direct the output of the YS640 chimney through some gas vent or dryer vent pipe during very cold weather to cool the smoke down and just exhaust it to a smoking box of sorts? As long as the exhaust gas flow isn't restricted in any way, I'd think it would be fine.
I'm with you on the white, puffy smoke and creosote flavors, smells, etc. I'd have to do some really good cleaning to see much inside the lid of my YS640 at this point, but it's really time I got to cleaning...so, heck, who knows. I may just be up for an experiment soon!
Anyway, thanks again. Interested in any thoughts re: cold smoking w/ blue smoke!
I do use a tube for cold smoking. I use an 18" tube in the bottom of a 640. I put the tube on top of the baffle guides up against the stop by the firepot. This keeps the tube up off the bottom of the cooker, allowing air flow 360 degrees around the tube. I fill the tube to less than half, turn it on its side and shake it to evenly distribute the pellets from end to end. Doing this puts a small layer of pellets in the tube. I have found that by doing this, the smoke from the smoldering pellets isn't as white and puffy, but, it is still full of wood solids and creosote.
Once I get the tube burning and sure it isn't going to go out, I carefully put it on the baffle guides, put in the heat diffuser and the grates and put in what I am cold smoking on the grates. Putting the heat diffuser in the cooker above the tube, forces the smoke coming off the tube to be dispersed, and allows a large portion of the creosote and solids to be deposited on the bottom of the diffuser. If you try this, you will be amazed at what ends up on the bottom of the heat diffuser. I do NOT run the fan, as this defeats the process by dispersing the creosote and solids before they can attach to the heat diffuser. I don't worry about the gunk that ends up on the heat diffuser, as it will get burned off during the next heat up cycle during a cooking session.
This is not a perfect solution, and not one that I believe is the final answer, but it is the best that I have come up with to this point.
- Joined: May 10th, 2014, 12:33 pm
- Posts: 576
- Location: Sitting Near a Yoder Smoker, Smelling Sweet Blue
Yoder_Herb wrote:I do use a tube for cold smoking. I use an 18" tube in the bottom of a 640. I put the tube on top of the baffle guides up against the stop by the firepot. This keeps the tube up off the bottom of the cooker, allowing air flow 360 degrees around the tube. I fill the tube to less than half, turn it on its side and shake it to evenly distribute the pellets from end to end. Doing this puts a small layer of pellets in the tube. I have found that by doing this, the smoke from the smoldering pellets isn't as white and puffy, but, it is still full of wood solids and creosote.
Once I get the tube burning and sure it isn't going to go out, I carefully put it on the baffle guides, put in the heat diffuser and the grates and put in what I am cold smoking on the grates. Putting the heat diffuser in the cooker above the tube, forces the smoke coming off the tube to be dispersed, and allows a large portion of the creosote and solids to be deposited on the bottom of the diffuser. If you try this, you will be amazed at what ends up on the bottom of the heat diffuser. I do NOT run the fan, as this defeats the process by dispersing the creosote and solids before they can attach to the heat diffuser. I don't worry about the gunk that ends up on the heat diffuser, as it will get burned off during the next heat up cycle during a cooking session.
This is not a perfect solution, and not one that I believe is the final answer, but it is the best that I have come up with to this point.
I do something similar with my YS1500. I slide the left grate over, open the HMS slider and put the tube under the HMS plate and allow the smoke to come up the same way it does from burn grate.
As with anything relating to barbecue, experiment with your cooker and find the method that works best for you.
Thanks for the info on cold smoking Herb. I really want to smoke some cheese but hadn't figured out how I was going to do it. I may just have to get me one of them smoke tubes after all.
Eagle River Barbecue
YS640 Comp Cart
Stumps Platinum 5
- Joined: May 10th, 2014, 12:33 pm
- Posts: 576
- Location: Sitting Near a Yoder Smoker, Smelling Sweet Blue
Yoder_Herb wrote:I do use a tube for cold smoking. I use an 18" tube in the bottom of a 640. I put the tube on top of the baffle guides up against the stop by the firepot. This keeps the tube up off the bottom of the cooker, allowing air flow 360 degrees around the tube.
Herb, sorry, but I'm not following you exactly because I don't know what you're referring to when you say "baffle guides." Here's a photo of the inside of the YS640 from the Yoder website. By "baffle guides," are you saying to put the tube across the round rods that enable the damper to slide left or right? If so, do I read you correctly that you put the tube against the crosspiece that holds and secures the guide rods towards the farthest left they can go, nearest to the firebox? I don't think you meant to say that the tube should rest over the firebox itself, but if you could please clarify, that would be great.
Thx
TJ
westhemess wrote:Thanks Herb,
Interesting and helpful. Honestly I have no intention of buying the same pellets as I have indeed notice much of what you stated. The ash build up seems a lot higher and the consumption does seem pretty high. I will check the firepot today. I do have the old style as my pit was built a couple weeks before the upgrade...would you suggest I buy the new one?
Also I did grill last night at 350 for 45 minutes without any problem. I did have one anomaly, but will chock that up to pilot error. Other than that just about everything I cook tastes better than ever and each one seems better than the last. Very happy all the way around...just thought it was unusual for the pit to shut down on its own.
Pacific Pellet does have a Oak based blend. the Gourmet Blend. I use this blend with great results.
Movin The Chains BBQ Team
I have an 18" tube so it fits across as in the illustration above. I fill it up to almost 3/4 full standing upright. I turn it on its side and shake the tube so the pellets are evenly distributed throughout the tube. I light it, let it burn for 10 or 15 minutes, carefully put it in the cooker, put the diffuser plate and grates in the cooker, and load in the cheese. I do not run the cooker's fans. The cheese is smoked for how ever long the tube lasts. Never really timed it before.
If I am not doing the normal fill the entire cooker with cheese, I also add a pan of kosher salt, as in the picture. If I do the salt, I stir it around at least once an hour.
Once the cheese is done, it gets vacuum sealed and goes in the freezer.
The salt gets sealed in bottles.
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