Proper pellet burn?

[whatamess]

What should pellets in the AMNPS burn down too to be considered a proper burn? I just used mine in my 30" MES for the first time cooking chicken drumsticks and they turned to black charcoal, but stayed in pellet form. No white ash except where I started it with the heat gun. Smoke seemed good, nice TBS. Traegar hickory pellets. It burned a little less than half a row in 45 minutes.

 

[Bearcarver]

Ash should be grey to white, and hardly any there. So light you can blow the ashes out with your own breath.

I get about 3 to 4 hours per row on mine.

Bear

 

[whatamess]

Ash should be grey to white, and hardly any there. So light you can blow the ashes out with your own breath.



I get about 3 to 4 hours per row on mine.




Bear

Hmm that's what I thought should happen. I've used it many times in the BBQ doing cold smoke cheese and I usually got 2 hours per row and nothing left but light and grey ash. I had the temp cranked to max for the chicken but now I have a small brisket in there at 225 so I'll see what it looks like in a couple hours.

 

[frog1369]

If the pellets are black and not burning to white ash you most likely have an oxygen problem.  I cold and hot smoke in my gas Smoke Vault and there is a definite difference when using pellets in my tube smoker.  When cold smoking it burns just fine, when hot smoking I need to move it just above the lower damper on one side and keep that damper almost full open, otherwise it will starve out rom lack of air.  You just need to find the right spot and the right air flow .......

 

[whatamess]

I just peeked and snapped a picture. This is 1:45 into the smoke.

 

[whatamess]

Shortly after I took that pic it jumped into the last row, you can kind of see it started to jump to the middle one. Billowing smoke and my temp was climbing out of control! Got that back under control and we are back to TBS. I think it's burning better but still seems too fast, I pushed in the loader so there is barely a gap. Slowly getting this figured out.

 

[Bearcarver]

Shortly after I took that pic it jumped into the last row, you can kind of see it started to jump to the middle one. Billowing smoke and my temp was climbing out of control! Got that back under control and we are back to TBS. I think it's burning better but still seems too fast, I pushed in the loader so there is barely a gap. Slowly getting this figured out.

Your picture is kinda small for me. Are you saying it jumped rows before getting to the turn??

If it did, I would say your AMNPS is filled to close to the top. If that happened you're going to get heat & too much smoke, because you would be burning at least 3 places instead of one.

Bear