pucks not burning all the way through

[bloaky]

it was bugging me that the price you pay for pucks and most would only burn half through. so I moved my dish of water over far enough to still catch the drippings from the tray and placed an small tin foil pan like the one under you bbg and now the pucks just drop into it but continue smoking into ashes. no more wasted pucks, more smoke for my money and no water logged pucks in my water dish.

[Quarlow]

The trouble with that is that when the woods burns past the char stage you get an acrid flavor and the smoke contains the tars and creosote which are carcinogenic. So your food does not taste as good and it will contribute to cancer.
  The Bradleys are designed not to burn the pucks past the char point. If you are not getting a full burn on your pucks it could be because you have too long of a extension cord, too many other things drawing juice on that circuit, your pucks may have absorb some moisture or you got a batch of slightly harder pucks. Your bowl should have been catching the pucks and the grease run-off from the v-tray.

[Habanero Smoker]

Is this for all flavor of woods, or just certain flavors? The type of wood seems to make a difference. I generally get a complete burn, but not with Jim Beam (top half will not burn) or mesquite (center will not burn); they don't seem to burn as well as the others.

Other factors that can prevent a "complete burn" (smaller in size, maintaining it's shape, and charred all the way through) of the bisquettes seems to be related to the cabinet temperature or if you are using a cold smoke setup. It seems the higher one cooks at, the better the burn you get on the bisquettes. If there is any residue build up on the burn plate, that will interfere with the heat being distributed to the bisquette. Bradley has posted on one occasion that alluded to the incomplete burn times could be cause by the bisquettes being compressed more during manufacturing.

[Saber 4]

Is this for all flavor of woods, or just certain flavors? The type of wood seems to make a difference. I generally get a complete burn, but not with Jim Beam (top half will not burn) or mesquite (center will not burn); they don't seem to burn as well as the others.

Other factors that can prevent a "complete burn" (smaller in size, maintaining it's shape, and charred all the way through) of the bisquettes seems to be related to the cabinet temperature or if you are using a cold smoke setup. It seems the higher one cooks at, the better the burn you get on the bisquettes. If there is any residue build up on the burn plate, that will interfere with the heat being distributed to the bisquette. Bradley has posted on one occasion that alluded to the incomplete burn times could be cause by the bisquettes being compressed more during manufacturing.

I just did an accidental test of the higher the temp, the more smoke/burn and it seems to be true. I started this morning when it was in the 20's with hickory and just the SG to finish my salt off, I wasn't happy with the amount of smoke I was getting and remembered this discussion from other posts and kicked the element on to 230 and at 213 cabinet temp the smoke was really rolling and the pucks burning more completely like I'm used to. Hope this helps the discussion.

[Quarlow]

it was bugging me that the price you pay for pucks and most would only burn half through.

One other thing to look at here is as you say the price of pucks. The Bisquettes come in around .60 to .65 cents a piece. You generally only smoke for 2 hours and with 3 pucks an hour for 2 hours = $3.90. This is not a huge amount. I like to compare it to when I was a kid and dad had his UPS (ugly plywood smoker) In order to smoke anything we had to go to the woods and cut the alder trees, buck them to length, load them in the truck or the trunk of the car as it were and haul it home. Then we would slice the logs into thin slices and scrap up the sawdust, then we could smoke our salmon. $3.90 for two hours seems like a bargain to me. Just my opinion. :)