Treager temp control.

When I raise temps on my Traeger it does spike but usually settles down. I like smoking at 190 to 200 anyway. Very seldem do I try to smoke at 225. The higher the temp the less smoke you will get. Just play with it and learn it. I love mine.

Keep the fire pit clean, use a vacuum to remove ash that builds up in the box. It will burn the pellets more efficiently.

For Baby Back Ribs, I set the dial on my Lil Texas Elite to 180 for two hours then bump to 225 to finish off. Sometimes I wrap in foil, with Apple Juice, after the 3 hour point (2-@180 and 1-@225) and take off around the five hour total mark.

If you're making Spare ribs then adjust cook time accordingly.

KG

Lift Gate Gus said:

Trying my first set of pork ribs on a treager grill. The treager I have is a lil tex elite with electronic read out for temp. I am trying to hold it at 225-230. When I put it at 225 on the dial it jumps up to 275-280. I drop the temp down to 180 on the dial and it goes down to about 200 temp.

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My question to you is: does the temp spike when you first turn it on, or does it happen after its been on awhile?

My experience with my treager is that when I first light it, the temp spikes a bit because the auger is feeding pellets into the fire pot to warm it up. Once it reaches the temp I have set it at it continues to go up for a short period until the pellet/temp ratio levels out, then it comes back down to where I set it. Depending on weather conditions I can have temp swings as much as 10* each direction from where I set it.

You may also try and clean the temperature probe in the cooking chamber. I found that I need to clean mine every 5 or 6 cooks as it gets a smoke build up and doesn't work as well.

I have a Traeger 075. I ran some test burns before I started cooking anything. During the tests, I experienced the same problem, set it at 225 and it appeared to run up on me. I decided to use my ET-73 to monitor what was taking place a grill level and to my surprise, my grill temps maintained 225 +/- 5. The digital control was all over the place as well as the dome temp. To me, the grill temp is what matters.

At the 180 setting, the grill temp maintains 185-190, I can live with that. If I want to cook at 200, I adjust the "P" setting to P1 or P0. This shortens the "off" time between auger cycles thus providing more fuel and hotter temps.

If you haven't done so yet, I would recommend placing bricks in the bottom of your grill to help stabilze your temps. It helps maintain your temps so its feasable you would use less fuel (I read this somewhere but haven't noticed a difference myself). It also speeds up the temp recovery time when you open and close the lid.

Bottom line is get a digital thermometer like the ET-73 or ET-732 and don't rely on the digital readout. Be patient and learn your smoker.

Oh yeah, the folks at Traeger advised me if your pellets are too long, they can bind up the auger until the pellets break. This will cause a drastic low temp spike followed by a high temp spike. My recommendation is to sift through the pellets real quick and break anything that appears larger than the average size.

I also have a traeger. I had the rep install a digital read out last year at a comp. The rep told me that the temp can fluctuate quite a bit, but if you look to the right hand side of the digital read out there is a small whole with a screw in it. That is the fine adjustment for the auger speed. You can set your temp then watch your temperatures, if you find they are running a little hot you can then fine tune your auger and slow it down till it hold where you want. Worked good for me.