I am looking for some advice.
I decided to smoke some cheese in my WSM since temps were in the 30s. I used a pellet tube for the first time and pellets from Traeger (cherry wood). Started the tube with a butane lighter and everything seemed to be going well. After two hours, I took the cheese out and vacuumed sealed them. I noticed that the smoke smell was pretty strong but didn’t really think much else of it.
The next day, I went to cover the WSM and the smell of smoke was insanely strong. I opened it up and there was a thick grease all over my WSM, grates, barrel, bowl, and dome. Mind you that I clean my bowl and grates after every cook.
I basically decided to do a hot burn in the WSM to burn off whatever the grease was. I cleaned the everything with a brush afterwards and things seem to be back to normal. However, I have no idea what caused this. The temp never got above 60. The WSM was relatively clean before hand. The only thing that I have never done before was the cheese, the pellets, and the pellet tube. It has to be one or a combination of those things that caused this. Any ideas? Anybody ever experienced this before? My #1 suspect is the tube. I did not throw it into a hot fire before using it to burn off whatever manufacturer crud was left on it. But I also have no idea how it would produce that much grease that would cover EVERYTHING.