How to Store Wood Pellets
Start with the Best Pellets
Traeger makes its premium wood pellets from 100% natural, food-grade hardwood. When properly kept, Traeger pellets create the optimal burn for wood-fired flavor. However, poor pellet quality, often the result of sub-optimal storage, is the No.1 cause of temperature issues.
Poor storage is not always the fault of the grill owner. New bags of pellets sometimes get compromised during shipping. To check that a pellet is top quality, look for a nice sheen on it. When broken in half, there should be a clean snap with no crumbling. Note: Some sawdust at the bottom of the bag is normal, but if there is a lot of it or if the saw dust clumps, the pellets may have been compromised. (In such cases, bring them back to your retailer or contact Traeger customer support.) Do keep in mind, however, that Traeger only guarantees the quality of its own pellets and not that of other brands.
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Keep Pellets Dry for Best Grill Performance
To protect your pellets, it's important to keep them dry. Because our pellets are 100% natural and don’t have artificial fillers, moisture can expand the wood and make it crumbly. Crumbly pellets can clog the grill's auger and may fail to ignite.
To store pellets properly, keep them dry and airtight. In arid locations, it's fine to keep unopened bags of pellets in the garage. But if you live in a humid region, moisture can seep even into unopened bags if left in the garage. To counter this, either place the unopened bags in a large airtight storage bin in the garage or move the pellets into a dry area inside.
Once you have opened your bag of pellets, it's even more crucial to protect them from moisture. While you can leave pellets in your grill's hopper for the short term when you know the weather will be dry, you should remove them from the hopper and store them airtight when prolonged rain or high humidity is forecast.
The Best Storage Option: The Traeger StayDry Bin
The Traeger Staydry Pellet Bin is the perfect receptacle for pellets. Not only can its 22-lb capacity hold a full bag of pellets, it was also designed to fit perfectly under the hopper on our newer model grills so you can easily empty the pellets right into the bin whether for drier storage or simply to swap flavors. It's rectangle shape is also stackable and storage friendly.
Pro tip: Get a few bins and use the pre-labeled flavor stickers and/or the six blank stickers so you can quickly identify stored pellet flavors, even if they’re your own custom blend.
