Really appreciate the feedback!
Also, I am assuming you change the foil with every smoke as well as removing any grease that may have accumulated under the foil.
We definitely changed it between the 6th/7th/8th smokes (good/bad/bad.) Very little grease gets under the foil, though. I think I wiped it up once with a paper towel but that was it. Maybe failing to mop up grease under the foil is the culprit?
Smokinlicious and Fruit-a-wood are good companies.
Done, thanks for the tip, will see how it goes.
Weigh the wood, using just a couple of ounces to start.
We have been weighing it. 7th smoke was short ribs with 2.2 oz. of hickory and 0.8 oz. of mesquite (our first smoke that had this bad flavor.) One of the earlier smokes we had done was short ribs whole cook unwrapped with 5 oz. mixed apple and hickory. It was super smokey but mighty tasty. Not nasty at all. That's one thing that made us think maybe it was the mesquite (even though our 6th smoke had mesquite in it with no issues at all.) So we excluded it from the 8th smoke, which was 2.1 oz. of hickory and nothing else. That was Mac n' cheese and it was in the smoke for 30 minutes though obviously in the smoker for longer. It was our first time doing that in the #1 but the nasty flavor of the top layer of the mac n' cheese was exactly the same nasty flavor that the 7th cook of short ribs had. Could the mesquite residue from the 7th smoke have impacted it? Question would remain why mesquite didn't ruin the 6th smoke.
+1. I feel it has something to do with the wood. You are probably getting combustion from dry wood. Mesquite chips are definitely going to give you a bitter taste if they combust.
8th smoke, which had the bad taste, didn't have mesquite in it.
I worry though that some got on the element. Not sure if that matters or if it just cremates next cook (though maybe that is why the 8th was bad?)
I would definitely buy some new wood from smokinlicious. A great place to start would be the double filet box with 3 varieties.
done! Thanks for the rec.
Could you put an umbrella higher over it?
Yeah I could actually. Not a bad idea, will do that next cook.
Are you remembering to poke a hole through any foil on the bottom for the grease to drain out and air to get in?
Yup though there's very little grease. I assume a decent amount of the grease is winding up in the water pan or dried on the foil, not out the drain hole. Might the water pan be part of the problem (changed each cook, no water pan used at all with the mac n' cheese cook)?
I'm assuming you don't see any changes to the wood and/or signs of any kind of infestation. Does the smoke smell good when it's coming out?
Not really noticing signs of infestation. Overall the wood seems fine though I haven't been hyperfocusing on it yet as I didn't really become concerned until the 8th was bad. Smoke has definitely smelt amazing on past cooks. I can't entirely remember what it smelled like on the past two cooks. I know at one point it smelled a bit like wood being cut by a bandsaw and gave me a "shop class" experience instead of a yummy food experience, but I can't remember when that was and didn't make anything of it at the time, so I'm not sure if it would have been connected to these last two bad smokes.