Scooooreee!!

[chobint]

Get over to Pelletheads.com for allot of good info. Did it come with the digital controller or the three position? Traegers are supposed to give some nice smoke! Congrats on the find! Try to find pellets other than Traeger's, theirs are about the worst unless you want a high temp burn. As most pellets, they are 80% oak/adler and 20% of the flavor wood, but they are loosely compressed and burn quick. Welcome to the dark side!

I have the 3 position controller. I was going to buy the digital control locally, but they wanted 199.99 for it!!!! I'll have to call them back and make sure they didn't misquote me.

I have been using traeger hickory pellets and somerset heating pellets. I do not notice a substantially stronger smoke flavor with the traeger pellets.

We have a lil' Tex and Jr. and love them both and use them in competition. A couple bits of info that we've gathered while using them:
- Cover the heat shield with heavy duty aluminum foil will allow for easy clean up, we change it each cook so that we don't get any off flavors
- Cut a plastic soda bottle in half and place in the grease bucket will also allow for easy clean up and disposal of grease
- Meats that you typically foil on longer cooks like butts and briskets, don't worry about foiling them b/c they will not get too much smoke
- I've always used Traeger pellets but am looking for something that gives off a bit more smoke flavor, someone gave me a bag of BBQers Delight which I am going to try
- Keep an eye on the hopper sometimes you get a bit of a funnel effect, where the pellets stick to the sides and don't feed into the auger and it goes out...b/c of the blower it sounds like its still truckin' along but there will be no heat
- Finally Enjoy It! At times I've used it like a crock pot, fire up a butt when I leave for work in the AM, check on it at lunch and when I get home after work it's done. You gotta love that!

Thanks for the tips. You are absolutely right about foiling the drip shield, all the gunk got burnt onto it from the brisket cook. So now I have some serious scrapey scrapey to do.