BeefStewpid
New member
Hey hey!
We primary have experience using a kettle but have grabbed one of these babies and we've done about 8 cooks so far in our new #1 with varying success. The last two cooks however came out with a mighty nasty surface flavor. Last thing we had in there was mac n' cheese and the top layer was borderline inedible. We definitely need to diagnose.
I really can't explain the flavor but it isn't good, to say the least. The closest I can think of is it tastes like bitter "housefire" perhaps a bit on the chemically-side.
Some thoughts:
1) First thing that comes to mind, based on the taste, is perhaps the wood has combusted? It's unclear why the first 6 cooks didn't have this issue. Maybe the wood has dried out more? It has been out on the patio since we bought it. A bag of Western apple and Western hickory, and a Kingsford thingy of mesquite chips. I'm thinking this might be the cause of the insane amount of papery film in the smoker box? (See image)
2) Maybe we need to clean it? It's been 8 cooks and we've only cleaned the racks. It looks staggeringly dirty and has some black sticky stuff in it as you can see on the door in the image below. Also, I notice some ash on the element. This might be due to a woodchip that fell on the element? (Normally in the kettle we'd just cremate this in the next fire but can't do that here it seems.)
3) It's under a tree dropping a lot of pollen. We hoisted a small dish over the exit to keep pollen out (see image), but perhaps this is hampering the smoke flow?
4) Bad wood? Hard to know why the first 6 cooks didn't seem to have a flavor issue, but could be bad wood? We used hickory/mesquite in the second-to-last cook and left the mesquite out of the last cook thinking that might be the issue but definitely not. Has me thinking it's not the wood.
5) Wondering if maybe the foil at the bottom might have shifted in the second-to-last cook impacting airflow, and then it made a residue impacting the last cook?
6) Says to not preheat but seems counter-intuitive to what we do on the kettle. Perhaps we should wait for that initial blast of white smoke to thin out and then add the food, ignoring the directions?
Any advice welcome!
We primary have experience using a kettle but have grabbed one of these babies and we've done about 8 cooks so far in our new #1 with varying success. The last two cooks however came out with a mighty nasty surface flavor. Last thing we had in there was mac n' cheese and the top layer was borderline inedible. We definitely need to diagnose.
I really can't explain the flavor but it isn't good, to say the least. The closest I can think of is it tastes like bitter "housefire" perhaps a bit on the chemically-side.
Some thoughts:
1) First thing that comes to mind, based on the taste, is perhaps the wood has combusted? It's unclear why the first 6 cooks didn't have this issue. Maybe the wood has dried out more? It has been out on the patio since we bought it. A bag of Western apple and Western hickory, and a Kingsford thingy of mesquite chips. I'm thinking this might be the cause of the insane amount of papery film in the smoker box? (See image)
2) Maybe we need to clean it? It's been 8 cooks and we've only cleaned the racks. It looks staggeringly dirty and has some black sticky stuff in it as you can see on the door in the image below. Also, I notice some ash on the element. This might be due to a woodchip that fell on the element? (Normally in the kettle we'd just cremate this in the next fire but can't do that here it seems.)
3) It's under a tree dropping a lot of pollen. We hoisted a small dish over the exit to keep pollen out (see image), but perhaps this is hampering the smoke flow?
4) Bad wood? Hard to know why the first 6 cooks didn't seem to have a flavor issue, but could be bad wood? We used hickory/mesquite in the second-to-last cook and left the mesquite out of the last cook thinking that might be the issue but definitely not. Has me thinking it's not the wood.
5) Wondering if maybe the foil at the bottom might have shifted in the second-to-last cook impacting airflow, and then it made a residue impacting the last cook?
6) Says to not preheat but seems counter-intuitive to what we do on the kettle. Perhaps we should wait for that initial blast of white smoke to thin out and then add the food, ignoring the directions?
Any advice welcome!