Quick question on pucks

[gryffandor]

Hi all, Well my OBS showed up today & I couldn't wait to get it going.  I followed the procedure in the manual to season the unit.  It came up to temp (150 deg) in 10 mins even though the outside temp was only around 40.  The pucks operated as stated but I noticed the top 1/4" did not char by the time they were ejected.  There was a fantastic volume of smoke being produced & just wondered if this was normal.  Can't wait for tomorrow to get my first batch of ribs going.

TIA
Gryffandor

[MPTubbs]

Yep  that's normal...they won't burn to ash.

[Tommy3Putts]

I'm new to Bradley also.  I have a DBS.  What I learned this weekend is to warm up the smoke generator before you load it with pucks, or the first one won't burn properly and you have half of it brown.  The bucks should be whole and black with a tint of brown.  They do produce awesome smoke!

[Quarlow]

You definitely need to preheat the burner but also some woods burn different than others so sometimes they don't burn all the way. They should be black all the way threw when you break them but if you are getting too much unburnt wood then you need to look at otherthings. Like do you have a good power supply. You need an outlet that doesn't have anything else running on it. You should track it to see if it is good. You also should use a heavy cord (12 ga) if possible and keep it as short as you can. I made my own with 12 ga cord and heavy duty ends and kept it to 15' long.

[classicrockgriller]

This is something to think about .... eh, oh yeah!

The puck burner will get "crusted over" so a little scrape scrape will help get you a solid heating element.

Takes two minutes.

Everytime I smoke cheese I clean my puck burner.

Good clean smoke!

[RAF128]

I was speaking with Brian from Bradley on another matter and pucks not burning came up.    His explanation was that at one time they made the pucks too soft and there were complaints so they changed them and now they are too hard.    More complainant.   They've addressed that and now they're slightly softer.   There are however lots of the older harder ones out there that will have to get used up before the new version gets to your smoker.