Traeger Cherry Wood Pellets Review

Hey smokers and welcome to my Traeger Traeger Cherry Wood Pellets Review. Now, for those of you who have visited my site before, you will know that it is all about my adventures on my new Traeger Pro Series 22 pellet smoker. And if you haven’t, well I bought one and and have been smoking away madly on it.

Traeger Cherry Wood Pellets Review - Header

And for most of my smoking exploits, I have been sticking to what I know in terms of pellet wood and flavors with Hickory or Apple for Pork or Mesquite for Beef. However, when I went to my local trusty BBQ store recently, they had some cherry options that I had not tried before.

So here we are, all the cherry pellets and luckily, a pork shoulder to cook!

Overall Score: 8.7/10

Quality and Consistency9.5Taste7
Heat and Temperature Control9.5
Ash Production8.5
Moisture and Dust Content9
Best ForConsiderations
Anyone looking for some decent pellets with a really mild flavorAvoid if you want a specific flavor from your cook
My Verdict
If you are someone who really doesn’t want a really strong smokey flavor in your cooks, then you can do a lot worse than these. They are well made, hold their temperature well and can be used on a large array of products.

So with that in mind, I am going to do a cook and see how they go. From here I will run you through:

  • What they are and how they are made
  • How I will test it/results
  • Pros and Cons
  • Cost
  • My thoughts

Disclosure: I am an affiliate of of Traeger and make a commission on sales of any Traeger products purchased from this page.

What Are Traeger Cherry Wood Pellets?

As the name suggests, Traeger Cherry Pellets are produced from the wood of the Cherry tree and outlined as suitable for:

  • Ribs
  • Beef
  • Pork
  • Chicken
  • Lamb
  • Baked goods.

As with most smoker pellets of quality, the Traeger Signature Pellets are made with the use of real hardwoods that are manufactured by:

  1. Griding: To start, the chosen hardwoods are ground into small particles to ensure that the wood is in fine enough form to be shaped into pellets.
  2. Drying: After grinding, the wood particles are dried to reduce their moisture content to around 6-10%.
  3. Compression: The dry wood particles are then fed into a pellet mill where they are compressed under high pressure which heats the wood slightly, causing the lignin (natural wood glue) to soften and act as a binder for the particles.

The formed pellets are then cooled, which hardens the lignin again and solidifies the pellets’ structure.

Traeger Cherry Pellets Review - me holding pellets

Check out my post: Smoker Pellets – What Goes With What?

How Will I Test Them?

To test this, I have simply undertaken some research to determine what characteristics make a ‘good’ smoker pellet. This way I am testing against a clear set of parameters including:

  1. Quality and consistency
  2. Heat and temperature control
  3. Ash production
  4. Moisture and dust content
  5. Taste

And for my cook, I have chosen a pork shoulder as the meat will allow for a good taste test and the cook long enough to really check out all of the above. This is how it went:

1. Quality and Consistency

In terms of quality and consistency, the key here is the appearance and feel of the pellets. I always look for a sheen on the pellets that are uniform in their width and circumference (length will vary). They should also feel fairly hard – i.e. not ‘squishy’ and make a snap when broken in two.

Poor quality pellets are also characterized by the presence of sawdust and other impurities in the pellet – trust me, if you have had these, you will be able to see it as you inspect them.

My score: 9.5

I have always found Traeger pellets to be of high quality with a good sheen on the side and consistency in size. The cherry pellets are darker than other with a great sheen. They are also are solid and do not display any evidence of sawdust of fillers in the mix.

Traeger Cherry Pellets Review - cherry pellets

2. Heat and Temperature Control

As we know, this smoking caper involves using wood pellets as a fuel to actually cook our food. Furthermore, the whole low and slow philosophy works best at a consistent, low temperature. And whilst most pellet grills (at the budget end anyway) do have slight fluctuations in temperature, a good pellet will assist here in keeping things ticking over in a set and forget scenario.

Poor pellets lose temperature quickly if there is not enough hardwood or consistency in the mix.

My score: 9.5

I may be taking a half point off unfairly here as my smoker does have a 10 degree variation depending on how many pellets the auger has distributed however in this case, there were no major fluctuations in the cook and the meat came out on time and cooked perfectly.

3. Ash Production

When wood burns, it produces ash. And when it comes to pellet smokers, pellets that produce too much ash can cause the burn cup to struggle to keep them alight. Additionally, the internal fans can blow ash all around onto your food as well.

The main thing here however is that the better the quality of the pellet, the less ash they produce.

My score: 8.5

When compared to the hickory or apple pellets I have been using, I really couldn’t see any more or less ash buildup after a single cook. My score here then is really based on that and nothing else as to be honest, having not used anything else than Traeger pellets, I really have nothing to compare it all to.

There was however definitely less ash build up than after the signature pellet cook.

Traeger Cherry Pellets Review - ash in smoker

4. Moisture and Dust Content

This one was probably covered in the first test above and not always the fault of the manufacturer. I mean if you drop the pellet bag enough they will break down a little. Additionally, if you don’t store them properly they can build up moisture.

I am therefor going to be a little lenient here. However, excess moisture and dust will definitely affect the ability of the pellets to maintain temperature and increase ash build up.

My score: 9

In light of the above, I have taken this from the point of opening the bag. Moisture content was non existent so a big tick there. There was a little dust however again, nothing more than I was expecting.

5. Taste

This last one if obviously a matter of personal preference so here I cooked the pork and let my family just taste it.

My score: 7

Now, here is the only issue here, whilst we did end up with a really tasty pan full of pulled pork, we really couldn’t detect and real difference in flavor to give any evidence that cherry pellets were in deed used. My wife actually asked me directly if I remembered to use the cherry pellets at all.

So, I am giving them a score if 7 as a base on the fact that the pork did really taste good, it just wasn’t ‘cherry’ enough. Maybe it would be better if used with a milder meat such as chicken or even fish?

So, My Thoughts

Look, in my view, at the end of the day when it comes to smoking meats, the last thing you want to be worrying about are the pellets. These pellets are well made, hold temperature well and can be used for almost anything that you could throw into a smoker.

I tested them on pork shoulder and as above, whilst the taste was good, there really wasn’t enough difference to make them an option (for me anyway) to get for a specific taste moving forward. That said, if you are someone that likes a really mild smokey taste, then these may just work really well.

Conclusion

So there you have it, honest review and appraisal of the Traeger Chery Wood Pellets. I hope it has been of assistance but as usual, if you have any questions please do not hesitate to reach out by commenting below. I would also love to hear of your own experience with these.

Are there any other products you have been looking at but want to know more about? If so, please comment below and I will do my best to get some details for you.

Until next time

Have fun and get smoking!

Paul

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