The wait is finally over. It took exactly five months from the day I ordered it, but the new pooper is here.
The crate it shipped in was plenty sturdy enough to protect the smoker in transit, and unboxing took about twenty minutes. Assembly was very easy with only the chimney with the attached optional handle needing to be installed on four welded studs. Once you tighten the four nuts, assembly is complete.
Fit and finish are what you expect at the +2K price point. That is to say flawless. The only small nit to pick was there was a small pile of metal filings still in the chamber from manufacturing. This took all of thirty seconds to clean out with a shop-vac, but that could have just as easily been done before shipping too.
First overall impression of build quality is "damn!" This is not a step up in quality from Camp Chef, Trager, or Pit Boss, it is a giant leap up. From the thickness of the body, to the heft of the heat deflector, it's not hard to see why you need to spent three to four times what you would for the other brands to get a LSG. There is easily three to four times as much metal by weight used to build one of these things. All of this bodes well for this smoker lasting a very long time.
A comparison of the DLX24 to the LSG 20x36 
One of the things I was very curious to see was the design of the fire pot, and "jam free auger". LSG claims that they have a unique design that produces better smoke than the traditional round pot found in every pooper I have seen before. As well as a different than most auger design. Well, they weren't kidding, it is different. The pot is square with a slope built into it that is supposed to allow smoldering of pellets to produce smoke, while at the same time allow burning of pellets to maintain heat. The auger itself does not appear to be anything thing unusual other than the being only about 6" long instead of 18" normally found on a 36" smoker. This was accomplished by shifting the burn pot way off to the right hand side of the chamber instead of the more traditional setup of the burn pot centered in the cooker. The auger also sits a good 4" above the burn pot with a ramp leading away from the auger, and down to the pot. I'm not sure how this makes it anymore jam free that any other design, but I also didn't tear into the guts of it to see if there are any other deviations from the traditional auger design.
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The real change here is how you access the fire pot for cleaning. There are two strap clamps that are easily accessible from the front or back of the smoker. Unclip those, and you can slide the entire fire pot out from the body. It is a little more work than the sliding trap door found on the Camp Chef, but the trap door on the Camp Chef also needs regular cleaning to keep it working smoothly. Only time will tell if this design is an improvement or not.
On the heat deflector, there is a separate piece that slides over the slotted section of the heat deflector that is intended to give you direct access to the burn pot for high heat searing. This really is a separate piece that is in no way attached to the heat deflector. Had I known how this was set up, I would have asked for a heat deflector with no grilling slots, and skip the sliding piece completely. I have several options readily available for searing, and don't intend to ever grill on this unit, so a solid heat deflector would be a better choice for me. YMMV.
​​​​​​Already owning a Fireboard means I had the app pre-installed on my phone. Getting the Fireboard controller connected was simple and straight forward, only needing me to enter the wifi password to complete the process.
Now on to the fun stuff. After following the manufacturer recommendation to spray everything inside down withcooking spray, it was time to light the fire. The hopper on the LSG pooper is way bigger than the one on my Camp Chef, and held all but the last few crumbs from a fresh #40 bag of Lumber Jack pellets. The controller will take a little getting used to, but once I have a few cooks under my belt, that will quickly be a forgotten struggle.
The unit responds quickly at startup, and it's only a couple of minutes before you can feel the temp starting to climb. From a cold start, with an air temp sitting at 15° and a brisk wind hitting the back of the cooker, the climb to the set point of 225° took less than 15 minutes. Given the thermal mass involved, and the weather, I was very happy with that. What I wasn't as happy with was the difference between what the built in probe read, and what the four air probes I was using to find the hot and cold areas. In this weather, running Lumberjack pellets, this thing runs hot. After a half hour of waiting for temps to settle in, the built in probe stays steady with the high to low temp swing of around 10°. That is well within the range of acceptable to me. The problem is, the probes at grate level read a solid 25° to 30° higher than one controlling the fire. Reducing the set point doesn't seem to make much of a difference either. After several hours I had the setpoint dialed back to 210°, and the built-in held things right around that temp on the display, but the probes on the rack we're still showing a range from 238° to 251°. I don't know if there is a way to build an offset into the controller, or if the issue needs to be dealt with by adjusting the setpoint 30° cooler than you want to cook. I also considered that this cooker may not like Lumberjack pellets as much as my old Camp Chef does, but I dismissed that based on the fact the controller thinks it is holding a steady temp, and adjusting the pellet feed rate accordingly. This mystery will need a chat with LSG to get their input, and I'll update this post with what I learn.
Based on the initial burn however, I'm pretty happy with how steady and consistent the temps are from left to right, and front to back. There will be more to learn on this, but already this pooper is doing a much better job holding a steady temp than my Camp Chef ever did. Even if that steady temp is twenty five or so degrees above setpoint.
The other thing that has stood out to me, is that there is a constant stream of smoke coming out of the stack. On the Camp Chef, you really only get smoke when you are on the down slope of the temp swing. On the LSG, the smoke is constant, and doesn't seem to vary much with rising or falling temps.
​​​​​​​Due to some unfavorable scheduling, the initial burn in turned into a 13 hour marathon run. However, even by my rambling standards, this post is starting to run long, and bedtime is coming up fast. So we'll pick this up again tomorrow.
The crate it shipped in was plenty sturdy enough to protect the smoker in transit, and unboxing took about twenty minutes. Assembly was very easy with only the chimney with the attached optional handle needing to be installed on four welded studs. Once you tighten the four nuts, assembly is complete.
Fit and finish are what you expect at the +2K price point. That is to say flawless. The only small nit to pick was there was a small pile of metal filings still in the chamber from manufacturing. This took all of thirty seconds to clean out with a shop-vac, but that could have just as easily been done before shipping too.
First overall impression of build quality is "damn!" This is not a step up in quality from Camp Chef, Trager, or Pit Boss, it is a giant leap up. From the thickness of the body, to the heft of the heat deflector, it's not hard to see why you need to spent three to four times what you would for the other brands to get a LSG. There is easily three to four times as much metal by weight used to build one of these things. All of this bodes well for this smoker lasting a very long time.
A comparison of the DLX24 to the LSG 20x36
One of the things I was very curious to see was the design of the fire pot, and "jam free auger". LSG claims that they have a unique design that produces better smoke than the traditional round pot found in every pooper I have seen before. As well as a different than most auger design. Well, they weren't kidding, it is different. The pot is square with a slope built into it that is supposed to allow smoldering of pellets to produce smoke, while at the same time allow burning of pellets to maintain heat. The auger itself does not appear to be anything thing unusual other than the being only about 6" long instead of 18" normally found on a 36" smoker. This was accomplished by shifting the burn pot way off to the right hand side of the chamber instead of the more traditional setup of the burn pot centered in the cooker. The auger also sits a good 4" above the burn pot with a ramp leading away from the auger, and down to the pot. I'm not sure how this makes it anymore jam free that any other design, but I also didn't tear into the guts of it to see if there are any other deviations from the traditional auger design.
​​The real change here is how you access the fire pot for cleaning. There are two strap clamps that are easily accessible from the front or back of the smoker. Unclip those, and you can slide the entire fire pot out from the body. It is a little more work than the sliding trap door found on the Camp Chef, but the trap door on the Camp Chef also needs regular cleaning to keep it working smoothly. Only time will tell if this design is an improvement or not.
On the heat deflector, there is a separate piece that slides over the slotted section of the heat deflector that is intended to give you direct access to the burn pot for high heat searing. This really is a separate piece that is in no way attached to the heat deflector. Had I known how this was set up, I would have asked for a heat deflector with no grilling slots, and skip the sliding piece completely. I have several options readily available for searing, and don't intend to ever grill on this unit, so a solid heat deflector would be a better choice for me. YMMV.
​​​​​​Already owning a Fireboard means I had the app pre-installed on my phone. Getting the Fireboard controller connected was simple and straight forward, only needing me to enter the wifi password to complete the process.
Now on to the fun stuff. After following the manufacturer recommendation to spray everything inside down withcooking spray, it was time to light the fire. The hopper on the LSG pooper is way bigger than the one on my Camp Chef, and held all but the last few crumbs from a fresh #40 bag of Lumber Jack pellets. The controller will take a little getting used to, but once I have a few cooks under my belt, that will quickly be a forgotten struggle.
The unit responds quickly at startup, and it's only a couple of minutes before you can feel the temp starting to climb. From a cold start, with an air temp sitting at 15° and a brisk wind hitting the back of the cooker, the climb to the set point of 225° took less than 15 minutes. Given the thermal mass involved, and the weather, I was very happy with that. What I wasn't as happy with was the difference between what the built in probe read, and what the four air probes I was using to find the hot and cold areas. In this weather, running Lumberjack pellets, this thing runs hot. After a half hour of waiting for temps to settle in, the built in probe stays steady with the high to low temp swing of around 10°. That is well within the range of acceptable to me. The problem is, the probes at grate level read a solid 25° to 30° higher than one controlling the fire. Reducing the set point doesn't seem to make much of a difference either. After several hours I had the setpoint dialed back to 210°, and the built-in held things right around that temp on the display, but the probes on the rack we're still showing a range from 238° to 251°. I don't know if there is a way to build an offset into the controller, or if the issue needs to be dealt with by adjusting the setpoint 30° cooler than you want to cook. I also considered that this cooker may not like Lumberjack pellets as much as my old Camp Chef does, but I dismissed that based on the fact the controller thinks it is holding a steady temp, and adjusting the pellet feed rate accordingly. This mystery will need a chat with LSG to get their input, and I'll update this post with what I learn.
Based on the initial burn however, I'm pretty happy with how steady and consistent the temps are from left to right, and front to back. There will be more to learn on this, but already this pooper is doing a much better job holding a steady temp than my Camp Chef ever did. Even if that steady temp is twenty five or so degrees above setpoint.
The other thing that has stood out to me, is that there is a constant stream of smoke coming out of the stack. On the Camp Chef, you really only get smoke when you are on the down slope of the temp swing. On the LSG, the smoke is constant, and doesn't seem to vary much with rising or falling temps.
​​​​​​​Due to some unfavorable scheduling, the initial burn in turned into a 13 hour marathon run. However, even by my rambling standards, this post is starting to run long, and bedtime is coming up fast. So we'll pick this up again tomorrow.
But it really depends what the feature does on that grill. If it smokes at sub 160 that's an amazing game changer in the pellet world. On my MAK I'll do jerky at sub 200 for an hour or two and then move it to the cold smoking box on the MAK for 5+ hours. I've played with loads of things cold smoked though. Eggs, cabbage for sauerkraut, nuts, etc... lots of non-fish options.
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