Failed brisket cook - please help

[boomers bbq]

Let’s see here. I started the cook on my pit boss at 930 P.M at midnight
Grease fire happened- got that taken care of
At 2 A.M. I woke up check my temps and the pit was at 75 (what the)?
I then went out to see what was going on and it went out (it was fairly windy out)
Tried to restart it all was going well but the smoke did not die done it got worse then whoop it made a weird sound saw flames from the door then it went out.
Scared the hell out of me.
Brisket is wrapped in the fridge now.
Going to try to save it in the morning
Probe was still in it when I checked on it and temp was 140

Any ideas on what happened?

 

[Nuco59]

If you google "why do pellet grills explode?", you might find your answers.

And there are a lot of hits- seems exploding pellet cookers is a thing.

Maybe improper shutdown and startup without clearing old pellets from the burn pot?

I don't own one... maybe one day. Maybe not.

Good luck, sir.

 

[Callahan-que]

What Nuco said, plus you may want to clean your grill every now and then.

 

[BlueHaze]

Follow instructions on shut down. I clean mine after every cook. Vacuum the pellets out of the auger area and generally clean the grill. Stay safe.

 

[4ever3]

Dirty fire pot, vacuum it out every couple of cooks.

Problem solved...

 

[ttkt57]

1. Vacuum your ashes out after every cook.
2. Scrape the grease and burnt crud off your drip pan after every cook.

Done. Safe. Yummy Brisket.

 

[Dweverett]

when pellet grills shut down they stop feeding pellets but keep the fan going to burn up everything left in the fire pot. For some, that's all you need to do for it to be clean enough to use the next time, for others, you should clean out the ash more frequently.

When the grill burns out on it's own that doesn't happen -- in fact, quite the opposite, you can end up with a heck of a lot of pellets being dumped into the fire pot. Unless you cleaned all that out (which at 2:00am wouldn't have been my first thought) the grill couldn't really ignite correctly when you turned it back on which tends to lead to a fire with lots of fuel that's smoldering and doesn't have enough oxygen -- until it does at which point you get a nice fireball.

 

[boomers bbq]

I am pretty good at cleaning it after/before I use it.
I didn’t even think of how it shut down/ will give it a real good cleaning this afternoon
And fire it up and let it burn for a while.
Thank you to all of you.

 

[ttkt57]

I didn’t even think of how it shut down

When you switch the Pit Boss off does the fan keep running for a while? I have another brand, and when I switch off, the auger stops feeding pellets while the fan keeps running for 20 minutes or so.

 

[boomers bbq]

It does keep running till the pellets are all burned out in the pot. And the unit cools down