I understand that price is an important factor when buying pellets, however all is not equal when it comes to pellet manufacturing and like most things you get what you pay for and pellets are no different.
There are 2 main ways that BBQ Pellets are made, from either whole trees or leftover residuals from other manufacturing processes, such as flooring or furniture manufacturing.
When BBQ pellets are made with whole logs, you get a small percentage of bark in the final product. This adds to the flavour complexity of the smoke coming from the pellets. It is more reminiscent of the original BBQ when people cooked using chunks of wood.
The other method of making pellets are not made from whole trees, but rather from the residuals of kiln dried sawdust. This could be cherry from a cabinet maker or oak from a flooring manufacturer. They make a great pellet, as they burn well, but the smoke from this residual sawdust does not possess the same flavour consumers get from a whole log pellet, another issue I believe with using kiln dried sawdust is that you are not totally guaranteed exact quality if using different suppliers.
Our pellets will be made from whole logs, we believe that if you are going to make a quality product you should only use the best materials available and have total control over the manufacturing process.
Pellets come in a wide variety and are either 100% Species, Blends or flavoured pellets:
The 100% species will consist of 100% Hickory, 100% Cherry or 100% Oak and so on.
Blends will be 100% of the desired wood for example Apple & Oak will have ½ Apple and ½ Oak or whatever ratio they are making.
Flavoured pellets will have 30-40% of the desire wood and then 60-70% of either Oak or alder as a base wood, (companies do not like to use the word filler, but that is what they are) So your Hickory Flavour will have 40% Hickory & Oak as a filler. There 3 reasons for this (or so I am told):
1) Many species of trees produce too strong a taste for a lot of people, for example, mesquite.
2) All wood burns at various heat output levels. So rather than have to adjust the grill for each species the user wants a consistent heat output pellet.
3) Some woods are very expensive because of availability, for example, Apple or other fruitwoods. Therefore a 100% pellet using apple and the price could be approximately double therefore putting it out of the range of many customers.
Other flavoured pellets use a base wood (depending where the pellets are manufactured) and then add flavoured oils into the mixing process.
Without going into pellet manufacturing 101 It is not as simple as throwing logs in at one end of a machine and pellets come out of the other end as there isn’t one machine that does it all. Depending if you are using logs or kiln dried dust the process is roughly as follows:
1. If you are going to use trees or logs these have to be reduced in size and made into woodchips.
2. Once you have the woodchips they have to be dried to specific requirements otherwise the pellet will not bind together.
3. The next step is reducing the woodchips even further into sawdust which can then be fed into the pellet mill to make the pellets.
4. Once the pellets have been made they need to be cooled and then bagged.
You do not necessarily need to know all the above information, but I feel you should be aware of the different types of pellets out there and also know what you are paying for.
I haven’t realised how much I have typed
We are looking for people who are prepared to trial our pellets and give us a honest & unbiased critique of our product. In return we will supply you with the pellets free of charge to trial and when we feel that we have a product worthy of selling to the UK consumer we will give you a full bag of pellets of your flavour of choice. That way we can make a quality product that customers want, be it 100% or blended pellets. If you want to take part please drop me an email to info@smokewoodshack.com and I will be in touch. Cheers
