I am feeling pretty confidant cooking on the pellet grill my boys got me for my birthday. Sweetie gave me the best compliment saying the latest brisket tasted like it came from a restaurant, it was so good. The grill does all the work, all I do is make sure it doesn't run out of pellets. I may have overdone it this morning (writing this Sunday). Instead of staying on top of the pellet bin, knowing I was in for another 8 hour smoke, I overfilled the pellet hopper figuring I only had to leave the top door open and build a pyramid of pellets up. I think this caused the hopper to be too full and heavy and maybe got the pellets to block up the turning mechanism. I had turned the grill on and figured all was good. I even came back in and got the pork butt ready by covering it with spices, mostly salt and pepper, but also a little mustard. I went out and put the hunk of meat in the grill even though it still said Pre, meaning it was still heating up. I didn't think much of this, specially since I hadn't had any problems with the grill. I went back in and we sat and ate the leftover brisket and sausages in tacos. After I finished, we were going to go to the store, so I went out to check the grill and that is when I saw it had an error, ER5 and the grill wasn't even warm.
I came inside to look up on the computer what that might mean and found it was the error code for a jammed turning device, the one that feeds the pellets to the burning apparatus. I dumped out the hopper, which is what is recommended. I then observed that the turning mechanism was working properly and I could hear pellets moving and getting dumped into the area where they are burned. After seeing that the pellets were moving and hearing the tink tink of the pellets inside the grill, I loaded the pellets back into the hopper and went inside. I had to go potty, and when I came back out, I found the problem there again, ER5. It didn't make sense, so again I dumped out the pellets, it hadn't had any problems before. I was just staring at it thinking what else I should take apart.
Javalina came outside, to check on me and he said I should look where the fire is (there is a heavy "cap" that keeps the fire away from the grill and the grate that have to be removed to get under there. I rolled my eyes, but did this. It is a sure way to get all greasy and oily because the grill was dirty from the brisket the day before and it hadn't gotten hot to burn up the residue. Sure enough, when I removed the cap and was able to see, it was overloaded with unburnt pellets. I don't know how they kept coming and coming, but the ignitor did not burn them up. It took a minute but we got the shop vac and I vacuumed all those pesky pellets up and retried the grill from step one. After a few minutes and me thinking it wasn't going to work, it started smoking and within about five minutes, the thermometer read 480 degrees. I let it run by itself to make sure and burn off all the residue from the brisket and then turned it off.
I guess I will be mindful about overfilling it in the future. It is really a great grill and so far I have enjoyed being responsible for cooking our family weekend meals on it.
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