YS1500 from West Virginia checking in!

* Abilene *

Joined: October 2nd, 2016, 6:25 pm
Posts: 6

YS1500 from West Virginia checking in!

First things first. I'm really new at pellet smoking and I've never used any kind of wood burning pit or offset prior. I got into the smoking food arena with a Weber smokey mountain. There were several things I learned to dislike greatly over time. The more and more I used it the more disappointed I became with the results. I'm not saying you can't cook good BBQ on a WSM because I've cooked some amazing food on it, but it has its deficiencies and I sought out to eliminate them. I decided to start searching for something to replace it with. I started doing a LOT of reading on pellet smokers because of the ease of use (stick burner without the fuss of tending a fire once an hour). All of them seemed to have the same lack luster thin sheet metal and central fire pot. It was then that I stumbled upon Yoder. Let me tell you, I was not happy seeing the price tag on them. However, as luck would have it, I got lucky and happened to find a used YS1500 for sale locally (within 150 miles). Crossed my fingers and pulled the trigger on it.

I just finished the first cook on it and I must say I'm blown away. Finally BBQ that can be exactly what it should be. This cook was on a bag of GMG Gold Pellets. It's a blend of 4 different woods. I see all these posts about people saying 'not enough smoke flavor' and they couldn't be more wrong. In fact, I think I might actually like a tad lighter smoke with some apple or pecan pellets. I've got a big sample pallet coming from Lumber jack and will report back the findings.

Yoder spared no expense to details and craftsmanship. That much is clear when you look at the quality of everything. The welds are a work of art. No smoke leaking from anywhere other than up and out the stack. It's thin blue smoke 100% of the time. I've never used any smoker that could do that.
I did learn it tends to like running a bit hotter than I'm used to. I'm usually dialing in the WSM around 225F and with these pellets, the YS1500 seemed to like 260-275F a bit better based on the gauges on the lid. (I know they're only used as reference points.) All and all I suppose that's a good thing. I haven't played with the damper or anything yet but I'm still learning the pit and how it works. Also, the other thing that has me impressed is its recovery time from opening the lid. Today it took maybe 3-4 minutes to come back up to temp and stabilize after moving food on and off the pit. All that heavy gauge steel really makes a difference.

Would I buy another YS1500? Hell yeah I would. And I've only got one cook on it.

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