A-MAZE-N AMNPS Maze Pellet Smoker, Hot or Cold Smoking, 5 x 8 Inch

This pellet smoker tray works pretty good and is generally as described, but in my experience there are some things you should know if you are thinking about buying it. First, I used it for the first time recently to smoke St. Louis style ribs in a Masterbuilt electric 30" smoker. I used the 3-2-1 method and the pellets I used were from smokingpellets.com and ordered through Amazon. I noticed several reviews before purchasing that stated it was difficult or impossible to keep the pellets lit, and several people were dissatisfied. There were a bigger majority that stated the pellets stayed lit just fine. I can tell you that on the first try I had no trouble keeping my pellets lit. In my opinion the people who are having their pellets die out are not following the directions correctly. You HAVE to use a torch to light the pellets, and hold the flame on them for a minute or so until they catch fire, then let it burn for a few minutes and get a cherry smolder before you blow out the flame. If you do this, as the directions clearly state, you will have no problem.The A-Maze-n pellet smoker claims to provide 10-12 hours of smoke, but I did not get close to that. I got about five and a half hours out of mine. This could be because of the brand of pellets I am using, or it could be my pellets were too dry, or for whatever reason. All I can tell you is that I was surprised it burned through so quickly, especially since I only burned it from one end. Your experience may vary, and I see plenty of reviews saying others are getting more smoke time, but I am not sure how they are getting twice the smoke time I got the other day.At the end of the day, this is still a pretty great thing to have for someone who wants to enjoy their life a little while still enjoying the art of smoking meats. The fun of smoking wears off pretty quickly when you have to keep looking at your watch and running outside every 30-45 minutes to see if you need to chuck some more chips into the smoker to keep it smoking good. Using this pretty much allowed me to get through my entire rib smoke with no additional worries about the smoke. I went out about every hour and it was still smoking just fine. In fact it seemed to get thicker as it went through the cycle. It started to choke out about thirty minutes before my ribs were ready, so I opened it up and tossed a handful of pellets back on top of the coals that were left in the tray, and that is all that was needed to stoke the smoke back up quickly.Despite the shorter smoking time than I expected, and wanted, I am still relatively happy with this item. I can still throw a big pork but in the smoker at 0300 hrs and then go back to bed instead of having to sit up and keep throwing wood chips in and losing every bit of decent sleep just because I want some pulled pork. And maybe the best benefit is since you aren't out there every 30-45 minutes, you won't smell nearly as smokey when you get done. Sometimes the smoke is just too much after a long day around the smoker, at least for me. So I give this four stars, and would give it five if it really lasted 10-12 hours, or anything close to that. I may try a different type of pellet eventually to see if it makes a difference, but for now I have a giant bag of these others and the taste from them was just fine. I think if you are waffling back and forth between a tube pellet smoker and the maze tray, the maze tray is the way to go if you can fit it in your smoker, because if I can only get 5-6 hours from my maze tray, you may only get 2-3 from a tube smoker. I wouldn't take the chance. Again, it may depend on your pellets or smoker setup.Good luck to you in your smoking, and don't hesitate to buy this product. I will use it on all my smokes from here on out.

Last year I purchased a 30" cabinet style electric smoker, which uses a small side loading tray to add small amounts of wood chips to create smoke. Besides having to repeatedly add chips every 30 to 45 minutes or so, I did not realize that I would be at the mercy of the small toaster oven sized electric element's heating cycle to get the new chips to smolder and produce smoke. This often meant periods when little or no smoke was being produced, especially during longer cooks when the door stays closed and the element only comes on briefly.This pellet tray design completely eliminates that problem. Once the pellets are well lit at one end it burns evenly for hours consistently producing smoke. I found that in my smoker one row of pellets burns for 4 hours, so it is easy to figure out how many rows to fill depending on the anticipated time of the cook. It is also welded together like a tank, this will last a long time.There are a few things to keep in mind for best results. First, make SURE the pellets are dry and well lit. Keep hitting them with a torch as needed to keep a small flame going for 10 minutes or so before you put it in the smoker and they will burn on their own and won't let you down. Don't rush this Also, if you have to place your food so that it could drip juices onto the tray, make a small drip shield by cutting a disposable aluminum pan in half and putting it loosely over the pellets. It does benefit from good air flow, so in my smoker which it quite tightly sealed (like a fridge) I just pull the side loading tray out slightly to let some extra air in, and leave the top vent open all the way. You can use any pellets you want, but most are only blends of the flavor wood, like 25% Maple and the rest Oak or Alder. The A-maze-n pellets are 100% the type of wood they are labeled for extra flavor. You can buy your pellets in smaller quantities since even a full tray that will easily burn all night long will hold less than a pound of pellets. I haven't tried this yet, but I hear it is great for cold smoking cheese, since it generates so little heat to produce the smoke.Get one!

I have a digital Bradley smoker that uses those super-expensive bisquettes (pucks), and I use with the cold smoke adapter. The puck advance mechanism never worked well, and I've replaced expensive parts on it only to have it break again months later. I got tired of manually pressing the advanced button every 20 minutes or finding the water bowl filled with $10 of unburned pucks! So I finally put it out to the trash and got myself this instead figuring it would fit perfectly in the cold smoke adapter. And it does! I also bought the 40 pound bag of Perfect Mix Smoking Pellets that Amazon suggested at the same time.This AMNPS puts out as much, if not more, smoke than the original Bradley pucks did. Only the smoke using those Perfect Mix pellets is much nicer. I'm not sure what filler base they use for those Bradley pucks are, but they're nothing like "real" wood pellets used in the AMNPS. The quality of smoke is like night and day, especially with cheese or cold smoked salmon where quality really matters the most. The AMNPS burns good and never went out on me even once when placed in the well-ventilated Bradley cold smoke adapter. Another great thing is that the AMNPS doesn't put out as much heat as the Bradley electric wood burner does, so it allows me to smoke even cooler now.My biggest regret was not knowing how much trouble I'd have over the years with my Bradley digital, and not throwing out that puck burner from day one. Even when it worked well, those Bradley pucks cost $10 Canadian for just a few hours smoking. With my $40 pound bag of pellets and the AMNPS, one pound of pellets gives me at least 10 hours of trouble-free smoking, so a total of 400 hours for $40! Since the AMNPS doesn't use constant electricity, I save an unknown amount there as well. And did I say, MUCH better smoke too? By being stubborn, I literally wasted hundreds and hundreds of dollars over the years. I just wish I knew sooner.Well fellow Bradley owners, now you know too.

I have an A-maze-n 6” smoke tube which I really like (gave it 5 stars) but wanted to be able to smoke for longer cooks. Note: I am using this with a gas grill and I set the burners for offset - meat on the cool side, smoke tube lit and placed near hot side (not over the burner but close). With the tube I got great results for ribs, salmon, etc. I use pellets as the fuel (apple, hickory, cherry).Here is the problem I am having with the maze type smoker: Because of the size, it’s hard to place the tray over a cool spot. Once lit properly, it will smoke really well for about 15 minutes (lid closed), then it starts to flame even if my burners are at the lowest setting. I think this is because any external heat combined with no lid (so a lot of oxygen) causes the pellets to flame instead of smolder. You know this because all the smoke disappears and the temp rises slightly. It would be better to have a perforated lid to prevent this. If I move this to the upper rack, I find it doesn’t flame but the amount of smoke is low - much lower than my A-maze-n smoke tube. It does smoke for a long time - just not a lot of smoke volume.So if you are planning on using this for a longer smokes in a gas grill, I would recommend getting the longest smoke tube, and plan on refilling (or get two) for longer smokes.This will be good for cold smoking cheeses (I.e. no other heat) but not great for my planned application. If there was a perforated lid, I think this would be great.

It is not to often these days that you purchase something that works "AS ADVERTISED",well this is one of those times. This thing as the name says is AMAZING. I only got it a few days ago and had a chance to give it a dry run. It is so simple. I guess that is why it works so well. Simply fill the maze with pellets. light one end with a propane torch let it burn well with a flame for about 8-10 minutes. Blow the flame out and you are good to go. I experimented for a while like that and was getting a nice even blue smoke coming out (i am doing this on a natural gas four burner bbq). Out of curiousity I lit up the other end so that both ends were burning toward one another giving me double the smoke. More smoke then you would probably need. This thing smoothly throughout my 6 hour test burner leaving just a very fine white ash at the end (less than a teaspoon) This weekend I get to test it out on an 8 lb pork butt, can not wait.

Ok I love the idea and it's a well made product. I bought it because I have access to a basically unlimited source of good hardwood sawdust for free. Cherry, hickory, walnut, oak, maple, all the good stuff. But this thing is a real goldilocks to use! It wouldn't stay lit, so I searched online and found a suggestion to nuke the sawdust in the microwave to dry it out. Ok, not ideal, but fine, I did that and it was a bit better but still wouldn't stay lit all the way through. So next thing to check was airflow, but I had it on the charcoal grate of an empty kettle grill with bottom and top vents wide open, lit it with a butane torch and got a nice big glowing cherry, let it burn for a good 10 minutes before I put in into the grill and closed the lid. It didn't stay lit for more than a few hours, about halfway through the maze. I finally put a small computer fan into the grill, angled down at the maze, well that did the trick, burned all the way through the maze - in three hours which is much too fast, it's advertised up to 12 hours. I would be happy with 8 or even 6 but not three. I will have to find some way to turn the speed down on the fan. Yeesh. Tried to call the company for help, gave up after a week of phone tag. I'm still glad I got it and would recommend it but beware, without a fan on it I couldn't get it to stay lit even with super dry sawdust.

I purchased an A-Maze-n pellet smoker in order to cold smoke salt, cheese, yogurt, etc. The smoker (and the Premium Cooking Pellets) arrived with a few days of placing my order and a few days ago I decided to "give it a go". After reading a variety of reviews about challenges getting the pellets started I also purchased a small blowtorch. I filled the entire smoker with pellets, used the blowtorch and the pellets started within a minute or two. The fire on the pellets went out in approx 3-4 minutes and I had a steady stream of smoke for hours. After 8 hours of smoking salt (also smoked cheese for 3 1/2 hours and yogurt for 1/2 hour) I had only used 1 1/2 rows of pellets (which does suggest this thing would have smoked for 16 hours). Once the pellets are lit you can pretty much walk away. I cold smoked in my propane BBQ and the heat from the smoking pellets barely moved the BBQ temperature gauge. I have a Kamado-style smoker which I use for low and slow and the A-Maze-n Pellet Smoker generated smoke flavour as good as the hot smoker. I'm thrilled with my cold smoker and would recommend it to others.