Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Food, Cooking, and Game Preparation Best (Smoky) Pellets?

I have a Traeger smoker and I've been using the Traeger brand pellets in it but they don't produce much smoke. What pellets do you guys like?
My old Masterbuilt produced a ton of smoke with a small amount of chips but the Traeger doesn't produce nearly as much. Thanks in advance.

At what temp are you using to smoke. I use smoke setting or 180 Degrees. I like Lumber Jack pellets.

Costco pellets are 1/2 the price

It's a pellet smoker. It'll never smoke visually like a standard smoker.

Several guys I know with pellet smokers use a separately purchased smoke tube to increase smoke.

Mesquite is going to give the boldest smoke flavor, then hickory I think. But it’s still not going to be super strong in a pellet smoker.

Like TR said, you can add a separate tube. Can even make a homemade one. Do not soak the chips.

Add one piece of charcoal, let it get solid white and add chips on top.

Got my first treager about 6 months ago, always said I'd never have something you had to plug in. I've sure been enjoying it though. Some Dr bought one and used it for about a week and returned it. Store owner said I could have it for 200 bucks. Been using Bear Mountain, tried them when they had a sale, two bags shipped for 20 bucks. I like the gourmet blend, also have tried the hickory. Noticed Academy sells them now too. I've also used B&B championship blend, I was pleased with it. Got a bag of Myron Mixon peach in the hopper now, its real mild, hardly any smoke. Bear Mountain has been my favorite so far.

Got my first treager about 6 months ago, always said I'd never have something you had to plug in. I've sure been enjoying it though. Some Dr bought one and used it for about a week and returned it. Store owner said I could have it for 200 bucks. Been using Bear Mountain, tried them when they had a sale, two bags shipped for 20 bucks. I like the gourmet blend, also have tried the hickory. Noticed Academy sells them now too. I've also used B&B championship blend, I was pleased with it. Got a bag of Myron Mixon peach in the hopper now, its real mild, hardly any smoke. Bear Mountain has been my favorite so far....more smoke than others but not too much, definitely smell it while working around the yard, neighbors too.

I’ve tried a couple different pellets, everything from Traeger to bear mountain, to lumber Jack and lastly Kirkland.

I can’t tell enough of a difference between them to buy anything other than Kirkland pellets for less than 1/2 the price of other pellets.

Is it the same smoke flavor you’d get from cooking over wood chunks? No, but I also don’t expect that.

You're not going to get a ton of smoke flavor from a Traeger, regardless of the pellets. You can increase flavor with a smoke tube(s). As far as pellets go, Traeger pellets suck. Weber/Cabelas/Lumberjack (all the same) give more flavor from what I've found. There are other (really expensive) options that you might need to order online that are supposed to give more flavor, but I haven't tried them as I've been happy with Cabelas pellets. I haven't tried the Costco pellets, but they're supposedly made by Pitboss. I've had terrible results from Kingsford pellets, so/so with Pitboss, decent with Bear Mountain.

This is a pretty good overview of some of the pellets.

I’ve had various pellet grills/smokers over the years. I’ve tried a bunch of different pellet brands and “flavors”. They all impart the same flavor profile as far as I can tell.

I generally buy the pit boss competition blend based solely on the price Lowe’s sells them at.

Thanks for all the replies. Lots of great information. The video was very helpful too. I guess the bottom line is that pellet grills just don't produce as much smoke as an offset smoker but the trade off is that they are easier to hold temperature and less clean up.

The biggest mistake is eating sample after sample with nothing to "cleanse the palate" in between. Especially with strong flavored food the taste buds fatigue quickly.

Does Irish whiskey make a good palate cleanser?

A lot better than nothing!

That’s what I do.