Smoke Knowledge - Z Grills Australia Knowledge Centre

How much smoke should you see during a cook?Z Grills are very competent smokers, but how much smoke should the chimney be releasing during a long, low temperature cook? The answer is very little. In fact if you can clearly see lots of smoke continually being released there may actually be an issue, such as lots of wood dust in the pellets. The huge cloud of smoke released during the first few minutes of startup is NOT what you should ever see during a normal cook. Such a huge smoke cloud occurs during the startup cycle due to the large pile of pellets that is dropped into the fire-pot to establish a good fire. During low temperature operation (less than 135℃/ 275℉), smoke is released in cycles roughly every 2-3 minutes. The controller manages both the delivery of wood pellets and the fan speed to allow the fire to die down, then more pellets are delivered into the fire-pot which smoulder releasing a nice batch of smoke. This is one of the key reasons that larger temperature swings occu...