New Yoder Tips

[mmmkam]

I have a Yoder YS640 that's due to be delivered this afternoon.

Just wondering if you guys had any tips to share for the initial burn-in and seasoning.

[MossyMO]

I would give it a good wipe down with a damp wash cloth on the inside and then grill 2 to 3 pounds of bacon and get the grates and grills interior seasoned up with some great bacon aroma and grease.

After that might want to get a tube or two of biscuits and set them in different grate area's to see if you have any hotspots to watch out for; this will help you get familiar with how your grill cooks. Biscuits work great because you will see which a browning more than others. Be sure and play with the lower baffle and how that adjusts grate temperatures... my guess is that it will cook fairly consistent, but you just never know.

[Wingman]

Best tip I can give any new Yoder owner is not burn in related but important. When turning the pit on set your temp and no matter what do not fool with the temp setting from that point on. THese pits are designed to overshoot on startup so you can add your meat etc and not lose much heat. They will over shoot 50 degrees sometimes then settle right in where they need to be.

Folks that try and reduce the temp will end up causing the temp to go into a cyclicle up and down rythem. The pit will sense where its at at change feed rates as needed to adjust.

[barkonbutts]

Hey congrats on getting that bad beast!

WASH WELL.. I had to wash my grates 4 times until the black crap came off... then BACON!!! at about 250* and then you will be good to go! Have fun and post us some pics please!! Nothing like a new Yoder!!

[mmmkam]

Thanks for all the tips both here and in the intro thread I posted in the other forum. I posted a bunch of pics in that intro thread here. I got the smoker all wiped down and ready for burn in, but just ran out of daylight. I did however go out and pick up about 3 or 4 pounds of BACON for tomorrow morning!

So my plan for tomorrow is (and feel free to offer up any corrections as you see fit):
1) Fire up the pit to 350* and leave for an hour once it settles in.
2) Shut it down, let it cool off, remove everything, and clean it out.
3) Put Burn grate back in
4) Wipe down all surfaces in the pit with the exception of the burn gate with PAM
5) Wrap drip tray in Alum Foil and put back in (I don't need to season this with PAM and do a run without foil/bacon first do I?)
6) reinstall all the grates and spray with PAM
7) Fire pit up to 250* and wait for it to settle in
8) Load up with 3-4 lbs of BACON!
9) Wait about 2 hours and should be good to go.

Anything I am missing?

[barkonbutts]

Thanks for all the tips both here and in the intro thread I posted in the other forum. I posted a bunch of pics in that intro thread here. I got the smoker all wiped down and ready for burn in, but just ran out of daylight. I did however go out and pick up about 3 or 4 pounds of BACON for tomorrow morning!

So my plan for tomorrow is (and feel free to offer up any corrections as you see fit):
1) Fire up the pit to 350* and leave for an hour once it settles in.
2) Shut it down, let it cool off, remove everything, and clean it out.
3) Put Burn grate back in
4) Wipe down all surfaces in the pit with the exception of the burn gate with PAM
5) Wrap drip tray in Alum Foil and put back in (I don't need to season this with PAM do I?) No you do not need to spray the dip tray... you have the foil on it... you will be fine and it will get well seasoned..
6) reinstall all the grates and spray with PAM
7) Fire put up to 250* and wait for it to settle in
8) Load up with 3-4 lbs of BACON!
9) Wait about 2 hours and should be good to go.

Anything I am missing?

Sounds like you are good to go... have fun... get some eggs or tomato ready for BLTs and or bacon and eggs!! yummm!! you will not want bacon any other way after doing this!!

[mmmkam]

Thanks Brian. I will have the bacon pics up here tomorrow! Now got to go put together the shopping list for ribs and prime rib which are next up on the agenda.

[barkonbutts]

Thanks Brian. I will have the bacon pics up here tomorrow! Now got to go put together the shopping list for ribs and prime rib which are next up on the agenda.

Oh you will be eating real well!! I like the St. Louis ribs... so good.. baby back are good as well just a personal pref. get a little tiger sauce if you can for those ribs! yumm!!

[mmmkam]

We think alike! That's exactly what I was going for with the St. Louis Ribs. I also picked up some plowboys yardbird rub to try out on them, so should be fun!

[mmmkam]

Doing the burn in now. Almost done. Letting it run a little long and just playing with the temp and monitoring it. I will post a bunch a pics and the numbers I recorded later tonight. I put a pit probe in at the center of the main grate and I am recording the actual temp every 10 min as reported by both the controller and a maverick just to see how it does. So far, once it settles in, it seems to hold a given set point +/- 5* which seems awesome! As expected it definitely likes to overshoot the setpoint and then cool down to stable. I also put the thermal blanket on it, but its very windy out as well.

What have you guys seen as a typical delta between what the controller indicates is actual temp vs a maverick probe at center grate?

Also here is a pic from my shopping trip today :) Its going to be a fun holiday week!

[Fishawn]

Doing the burn in now. Almost done. Letting it run a little long and just playing with the temp and monitoring it. I will post a bunch a pics and the numbers I recorded later tonight. I put a pit probe in at the center of the main grate am recording the actual temp as reported by both the controller and a maverick just to see how it does. So far, once it settles in, it seems to hold a given set point +/- 5* which seems awesome! As expected it definitely likes to overshoot the setpoint and then cool down to stable. I also put the thermal blanket on it, but its very windy out as well.

What have you guys seen as a typical delta between what the controller indicates is actual temp vs a maverick probe at center grate?

Also here is a pic from my shopping trip today :) Its going to be a fun holiday week!

Sounds like you are having a good time with it & hope it puts out some good eats. Looks like a successful shopping trip

[mmmkam]

Burn in

So this is my experience with the first fire up of this unit for burn in.

It was about 40* out and I wanted to run it at 350* for an hour. After cleaning off the internals and putting everything back together I fired it up and put it in H3 start-up mode. There was a consistent delta between the controller temp display and my maverick probe sensor placed on the center of the lower grate of about 28-29*, but the great part was that for a given set point it maintained it +/- 5* for over well over an hour.

Initially I didn't see the temp spike and settle that Wingman warned about, but after an hour I adjusted the temp up. Since I was seeing a temp delta of 28* and had the controller set at 350 and seeing 322 center grate I upped it to 375 figuring that would get the maverick at center grate reading just under 350. I this point it did exactly what Wingman said with a spike and then settled in.

It got dark so I ended up shutting it down before I got a chance to see how long it would take to get really stable at the new temp, but during my rib cook that I just posted I started it up in H2 mode, took a little longer to get up to temp, but for the most part (85% of the time give or take) kept within +/- 5* just like the burn in with occasional variance +/- 10 or so. When I would open the pit it would typically recover by spiking about 20-25* over temp and then settle down pretty quickly into above +/- range from setpoint.

The temp and time recordings from the burn in are below:

Min From Start - Maverick - Controller - Delta
0 - 50 - n/a - n/a - Set for 350*, H3 mode, 40* outside temp
10 - 298 - ? - ? - Didn't think to record controller value until next reading
20 - 320 - 348 - 28
30 - 315 - 344 - 34
40 - 316 - 344 - 28
50 - 320 - 349 - 29
60 - 325 - 353 - 28
70 - 322 - 350 - 28
This is the point I upped it to 375, but stopped tracking it.

[mmmkam]

Season with PAM & Bacon

Here are a couple pics from seasoning.

Covered the pit probe and firebox then hit it with PAM.

Gave the Bacon a little brown sugar and then onto the smoker. Had a little bit of a hot spot in the bottom corner with about 3 burnt pieces. The rest look dark due to the caramelized sugar, but were actually fantastic. We about ate ourselves sick when I pulled these off the smoker.

[Wingman]

Thanks for all the tips both here and in the intro thread I posted in the other forum. I posted a bunch of pics in that intro thread here. I got the smoker all wiped down and ready for burn in, but just ran out of daylight. I did however go out and pick up about 3 or 4 pounds of BACON for tomorrow morning!

So my plan for tomorrow is (and feel free to offer up any corrections as you see fit):
1) Fire up the pit to 350* and leave for an hour once it settles in.
2) Shut it down, let it cool off, remove everything, and clean it out.
3) Put Burn grate back in
4) Wipe down all surfaces in the pit with the exception of the burn gate with PAM
5) Wrap drip tray in Alum Foil and put back in (I don't need to season this with PAM and do a run without foil/bacon first do I?)
6) reinstall all the grates and spray with PAM
7) Fire pit up to 250* and wait for it to settle in
8) Load up with 3-4 lbs of BACON!
9) Wait about 2 hours and should be good to go.

Anything I am missing?

I personally would heat it up to 225 degrees and cook my bacon at that temp. Thats how I do all my bacon and yes I have cooked it hotter and no I have not liked the end result as much as the cooks @ 225 degrees. Just my opinion.

[mmmkam]

Thanks for this tip. I will try that next go round.