As some may know I've recently purchased a very small pellet smoker. LOVE it. it's not perfect (sometimes needs to be 'started' twice) but I've fit as much as 4 racks of ribs in it at once and it really does open up a whole new world of cooking for me.
On to my conundrum. Being a guy I want to step up my game a bit and have room for even MORE food on this thing. Particularly multi part meals (meat, veggie, beans, etc). I'm sold on the pellet method for sure. I'd like two shelves with enough depth to set a rack of ribs front to back. Easy firepot cleanout would be a plus also. I've found it's not entirely fun having to pull the grates, shields and diffuser out to vacuum the ash every other cook.
So I visited a Yoder dealer this weekend. Looked at the YS480. HEAVY duty construction and beautiful design.
awesome heavy gauge rod shelving on the outside and dual shelves inside. HEAVY shield. Firepot is offset but I've read no concerns about even heat. The dealer says vacuum every 20lbs of pellet use. concerns are it is heavy for wheeling out of garage and entirely too heavy to try wheeling through grass. we don't have a covered patio and I'm not leaving a pellet grill in the elements even with a vinyl cover. Too much electronics involved.
Noticed a copy by Blazn Grills that is built with 16ga double wall construction. Interestingly the claim is the thin steel double wall construction is MORE efficient for pellet usage than heavy steel walls of the Yoder.
Blazn is about $1k plus 200 shipping for similar size to the YS480. The Yoder I can get for $1224 with no shipping (I can pick up from dealer about an hour away). it has a pull out firepot cleaning system that would be really nice...at least in theory.
Definitely don't want to spend more than these amounts. Not too much else out there grabbing my attention. Mak is just ugly and I think you're paying for a controller that does stuff I don't care about (presents, time changes, etc) and about $1700 shipped. Memphis is 2x's the cost. Traeger feels like cheap china junk even compared to my Green Mountain. Would consider the Green Mountain Daniel Boone non wifi (finding I don't care about the wifi feature on my Davy Crockett) which is about half the price of the Yoder in black with no wifi. Not sure that it has a second shelf and the front shelf is reportedly too low for easy use. also built much thinner.
Appreciate any thoughts from those experienced in pellet cooking. Could be I'm missing an important consideration? Really want good temp control, moderate smoke and reliability. Reasonable pellet efficiency would be nice too but this dealer sells Smoke Ring pellets for $17/40lbs.