Stampede FINALLY ITS HERE and my thoughts

[ndfan6464]

boy is it GLORIOUS!!! Okay so the website pics and members pics dont do these smokers ANY justice. These smokers are tanks and beautiful built. Wow! Iam so glad that I decided to take back what I thought was king of the smokers Traeger so I could pick up this beauty.

Okay so right from the get go the packing was well thought out. Which was awesome to see. No cheap cardboard and foam wrapping.

The smoker is itself is really impressive. As someone who does fabrication as 2nd job/hobby that's the first thing I look at and they did a fantastic job. All the bends are nice a crisp. Spot welds from what I can see are sold and in the right spots. They arent more to one side then the other. All the grinds are cleaned and done great.

Love the ton of stainless steel (SS) Unlike others who choose to use limited use of SS, That's where RT did it right and for the Stampede not being the top model they didnt short change us. Hats off for that.

Setup was super easy even by myself ( they do say in the manual to have 2nd person).

Havent had the chance to do intial burn yet since its pouring buckets here in the south so hopefully on that end it works as advertised.

So far the issue I have is cant get Wifi to work. Read all the tips and tricks and watched RT's videos and no luck. So waiting for their Wifi tech to call me back.

2nd issue. ITS SO DANG PRETTY I dont want to cook on it hahah

Lastly I can see where the wheel mod that's going around can be useful. But havent rolled it around enough to see if it would truly benefit for me. I'll be rolling it maybe 3 ft out of the shop and that's about it..

Only mod I am doing right now is painting the SS lid resting point. As others have mentioned I can see where maybe over time this could wear on the powder coating. So iam spraying it with Plastidip

Overall I am beyond impressed oh and if you think there isnt enough cooking space on the Stampede 590 think again. Cooking chamber is massive.

Cant wait to fire her up

 

[Mike]

So what are you going to cook first @ndfan6464?

 

[ndfan6464]

Iam going to go all out and test this thing on a full packer brisket.


So just got off the phone with RT wifi tech and man you are not kidding CS is awesome. So anyway I got it situated with the wifi and everything is up and running.

**WIFI FIX**
So for you Samsung users. If your smokers wifi isnt seeing the network and you know your system is on 2.4 go into your phone settings -> Biometrics and security-> scroll down to LOCATION and make sure that toggle is ON. Its needs to be on for the initial setup. Once you've set it up your smoker and app you can turn it off. You wont need to turn on your location aka GPS again.

For some reason on Samsung phones the phone wont allow the App to turn on location. Once I did that I was able to get the wifi to connect

 

[KirkP]

My 4th cook was a 10 lb brisket just this last weekend. Wow, it turned out amazing. Beautiful smoke ring, great bark. Did it naked, no wrap. 225 for the first 3 hours and then 245 for the rest (total of 13 hours) to a temp of about 205. Simple 50:50 kosher salt:coarse black pepper rub (with some Hungarian paprika too). Couldn't stop eating it...

 

[ndfan6464]

Man that's just making my mouth water just thinking of it. Good to hear iam not the only guy that doesnt wrap the brisket. Although I've never bumped up the heat like you mentioned. Just usually maintain a strict 225 +/- couple degrees through the whole cook. I've also only done two smokes on a pellet smoker before.

I'll have to give the bump to 245 a try...

 

[KirkP]

The idea to do 245 was from someone else's post here but I also saw on youtube that Aron Franklin does his brisket at 250. The temp on the Stampede was amazingly constant over the course of 13 hours. I think next time I'll center the brisket a little more towards the lid - seemed like the back side was having a harder time getting up to 205. Perhaps due to the smoke vents? I put the flat to the left

 

[ndfan6464]

That's good information about the hot and cold spots on this smoker. Its probably, just like you said the vents keeping the rear cooler. It does have a lot of vents. Which made me skeptical about how itll maintain heat when I was first looking at after you told me about RT..

But these guys are smarter then me and based on our talks and others I trust it to work..

I usually cook center of the cooking chamber. I'll have to try your thoughts and move it more towards the lid.

I remember reading in Aaron's book about his cooking temp. I always told myself I should try cooking at that temp but never could bring myself to do it. Hard to break from what you know and trust... hahah

 

[cookingjnj]

Awesome ndfan. Looking forward to seeing great cooks from your pit.

 

[ndfan6464]

Thanks and same here. Once it decides to stop pouring rain..

 

[ndfan6464]

Alright so fired up my RT and right off the bat I had to hit the troubleshooting guide... fans werent spinning and thanks to the guide I got that solved.

Now for next thing. Iam doing the initial burn so set the temp to 400 as per the manual. Smoker flew up to 400 degrees as per the installed thermometer. But, but as per my two Thermoworks thermometers the cooking chamber is about 20 degrees off from the what is displayed on the screen.

One is monitoring the center of the chamber at grill level and one is front left grill level.

Again this is initial burn. See pics

I hopefully dont have another Traeger issue. I am sure I am over reacting but iam not having any luck with pellet smokers.

 

[ndfan6464]

Also what's the small fan for? The large one is on a continuous spin. The smaller one spins for 1 sec off 5 sec in that continuous pattern

 

[ndfan6464]

Oh JFYI Plastidip didnt survive the hot lid hahah.. didn't even think of that..

 

[KirkP]

Also what's the small fan for? The large one is on a continuous spin. The smaller one spins for 1 sec off 5 sec in that continuous pattern

The small fan is for the auger motor. It's intermittent as the auger goes on and off feeding pellets to grill. One thing about the RecTec is that you can actually calibrate the barrel thermometer to your 3rd-party thermometer. The easiest way is through the app under the settings section. Note that it is a percentage up or down, not deg.

Make sure though that you let it preheat for a good long time. I thought mine was off a bit but eventually my ThermPro and the barrel thermometer agreed to within a couple of deg.

 

[ndfan6464]

I did the initial burn for 1.5 hours and I think they closed the gap to about 15 degrees of each other.

I'll run it again tomorrow empty and see what it does. Iam using Traeger pellets just to use them up. Dont want to waste my Lumberjack

 

[ndfan6464]

Now that's money in the bank, Hallelujah I've finally have a pellet smoker that does what its supposed to do..

After the initial burn I did yesterday and having off readings I thought I'd do another empty chamber burn and see if I got a different reading and I got what I was hoping for..

Reading center at grill level and I have another reading front right corner. Its reading higher then 400..

 

[KirkP]

Take that, Traeger

 

[ndfan6464]

Hahahah right!! So glad you talked me into getting a RT.. They need give you a finder pay

 

[KirkP]

I just very glad that your RT turned out to be every bit as good as mine. So far it has exceeded all expectations. I've got the sear kit on order and it shouldl be here on Wed. Looking forward to what that does to a good ribeye.

 

[ndfan6464]

That's awesome, you'll have to let me know how they work..

I have notice that with the vent holes on these that if I get a gust of wind the chamber temp will drop almost 20 degrees...I just had it happen..

So I may be ordering the weather vent addition that they make

 

[KirkP]

I've got the weather vents - just installed them this morning. They fit a little wonky, but I think they will kill that particular problem.