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[MMike]

We all know water pans are commonly used in smokers.

Anyone tried them in a pellet grille?

[Timbo1010]

I do for brisket and rib cooks. Chicken and pulled pork I don't

[ArborAgent]

I’ve done it in the past. I don’t bother anymore.

[Jcorwin818]

Never use water pans in my smoker.

[okie smokie]

Never use water pans in my smoker.

Neither do I. Some guru's disagree.   

[Brushpopper]

I’ve done it in the past. I don’t bother anymore.

I did when I first got the Traeger because of the crazy temp swings.  Ortech fixed that issue and haven't needed one in the GMG.  Everything turns out juicy.

[mowin]

Never seen the need. 

[triplebq]

I use a pan of apple juice and water when using my FEC. Does it make a difference?  I don't know but I guess it is habit.

[pmillen]

We all know water pans are commonly used in smokers.

Anyone tried them in a pellet grille?

I did a search on water.  There was a discussion here.

[LowSlowJoe]

As a general rule, I don't feel the need for any water pan...

  However, I used one once, put it on the right of my direct cooking area while I smoked a full packer brisket. That was the only time I ever cooked a big hunk of meat that never really stalled. Apparently the increased humidity slowed or stopped the evaporative cooling that causes the stall.   I will do it again, but haven't really cooked another brisket since then, so I can only speculate that if I do it again, the same results will occur.  The brisket turned out very nice, lots of bark and cooked faster than any other brisket I've ever done without wrapping.

[Lantern]

LowSlowJoe nailed what I was going to mention about the stall and how it's affected by moisture.
Another advantage of a moist environment is that smoke is water soluble and it helps with smoke flavor.

[pmillen]

As a general rule, I don't feel the need for any water pan...

  However, I used one once, put it on the right of my direct cooking area while I smoked a full packer brisket. That was the only time I ever cooked a big hunk of meat that never really stalled. Apparently the increased humidity slowed or stopped the evaporative cooling that causes the stall.   I will do it again, but haven't really cooked another brisket since then, so I can only speculate that if I do it again, the same results will occur.  The brisket turned out very nice, lots of bark and cooked faster than any other brisket I've ever done without wrapping.

I hadn't thought about it, but this makes sense.

The "new" heat entering the pit will–

• Maintain the pit's internal and metal temperature
• Vaporize the water in the pan
• Vaporize the water in the meat
• Increase the meats internal temperature

The meat's moisture may be less likely to evaporate if the pit interior is at or near 100% humidity.  The result being more heat energy used to raise the meat's IT.

I suppose that doing this requires more heat input, so we'd burn more pellets.

I suspect that the same thing could be accomplished by creating a micro-environment in which to cook the meat.  Wrapping the meat in aluminum foil and including a few ounces of liquid to raise the humidity in the micro-environment would accomplish the same thing without the water pan and the requisite additional heat input.

Apparently, that's the genesis of the Texas crutch.

[LowSlowJoe]

Here's some photos of the brisket I cooked with a water pan sitting in my direct grilling area of the PG500...  This was done with PG500 set to 240F, total cook time was about 12 hours

[LowSlowJoe]

And here's a screen shot of my iGrill near the end of the cook... As you can see there was a bit of a change in the rate of temperature rise, but nothing I would call a 'stall'.

[Bentley]

I always thought water pans were used to even cooking temperatures in things like WSM...I know owners that would add sand to then because it worked as well and they did not have to refill.

I know Jack's Old South used cookers with huge water pans that even had water that could be feed back into them.  Never did here a reason why...

I think I did a cook with the IPT Performance Test on Pelletheads with there dip pan full of water.  After looking at this thread I was gonna go see if I had done that...but my IP address has been banned by a Moderator on that site so I am not allowed to view it any more.