Painful lesson learned today...

[Srl135]

I am visiting my dad and he has a Traeger Elite. Very nice grill and since I'm in the market for a pellet grill, I was excited to get something on it. The plan was to do a brisket for dinner today and the only question was, when to start it. Smoke it overnight and ensure it has time to warm and rest before we eat or start it early in the morning. My dad has used it on an overnight cook once before and encouraged me to give it a try. You probably know where this is headed...

So we got a 14lb brisket on the smoker at 8:30 last night. I baby sat it for 3 hours looking for any signs of concern. The temp held rock steady. Not a single cause for concern. Went to bed. Woke up several times but decided not to go check it because I didn't want to wake the house by opening the garage door. I should have. When I got up after a wonderful 8 hours of sleep, I found the smoker off with error code 'LER' (I think that's what it said). I think this basically signifies a flameout situation occurred at some point and the grill shut down. No idea when this happened but the outside temp upon discovery was 72, the grill was 72 and the brisket was 72. It was 98 degrees internal temp when we went to bed, so after a hopeful google consult I resigned to finishing the smoke of the brisket as an experiment rather than a meal.

Last night the traeger was perfect. Today all day it was perfect. No issues and no temp fluctuations. O BABYSITTINF REQUIRED! This morning it was breezy so my only assumption is that it got windy overnight and blew out the flame.

Any other suggestions on what shut down the traeger overnight?

Sucks that when I watched it, there was no intervention required. Turn away and it fell apart.

[Jerod Broussard]

No idea on the grill, but I don't trust anything but my Smoke or Maverick alarms for overnight cooks.

[Srl135]

If I was at home, yes I have one. Dad also had one but it hasn’t functioned right for a while.

[Argoboy]

My Traeger pellet grill has gone out on me three or four times since I bought it last spring and I am not sure why. A guy selling Traeger grills at Costco told me to close the the top vent some but it did not help. On You Tube there is information about setting the P setting which is the pause time but if you change from the default value the smoker will run hotter than set point because it is firing more often but it should not go out. I am not sure what the solution is, I have not spoken to Traeger about it. When it goes out you have to clean up the excess pellets from fire pot or it will burn too hot.

[GigiH60]

Hey there. I was told that the P settings only affect the auger interval when the thermostat is on Smoke. They guys told me that there is no affect on any higher settings. Gigi

[kmhfive]

As Jerod Broussard stated, use a Maverick, Smoke, or FireBoard to set grill temperature alarms. I had an old PitBoss pellet grill that would flame out sometimes. The Maverick saved my but and my brisket!

The cause for me was typically a change in temperature outside without a high enough grill temperature setting — 225F was too low a temperature when the outside air temperature dropped...I had more consistent burns in the 250-275F range.

Good luck!

[jgreen]

Tough one! I hate it when a cook session turns bad. Some form of remote thermometer might have saved it, but you were not at home and maybe you dad does not have one.

[Dadof3Illinois]

Does anyone know if this a problem with just the Traeger grills or something that happens to all pellet grills?

[CandySueQ]

In my opinion, "Set & Forget" is a recipe for disappointment! I always check at least every couple of hours.

[Dadof3Illinois]

I was just wondering if the majority of pellet grills have issues with wind. I’m the same way and check my cooks pretty often. But if these grills all tend to have problems with any wind I’ll rethink getting one in the future.

[CowboyScott]

I've had a Rec Tec 680 for a bit and have done a bunch of cooks on it, some in very windy weather (welcome to Colorado) and at very low temps (180° overnight) and have never had any issues. Not saying it couldn't happen, but haven't seen it with the Rec Tec at all.

[Srl135]

Well the pellet grill was put to use yesterday evening for steaks and chicken and then today for a turkey. Performed flawlessly the whole time. No clue why it happened but couldn’t get any signs of any issues that might suggest what happened. Oh well!

Steaks, chicken and turkey all turned out amazing!

[Jerod Broussard]

Murphy cooks at night.

[Mr. Bones]

Murphy cooks at night.

Nailed it Jerod Broussard !

[kbremer]

I have been told that sometimes the pellets are to big for the auger.............do not know for sure because I do not own 1. My neighbors has 1 and it has happened to him twice. Maybe see if you pellets are to big.......

[Srl135]

No, they were Traeger pellets, and all I did after finding it shutdown was restart it to finish the cook and see if i could see it fault again to show me why. Not another issue. Perfect the rest of the time.