What Is the Pit Boss P Setting and How Should You Use It
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Have you bought a new Pit Boss Pellet Grill and wondered what that little P setting on the controller is for and how it works?
Even though it is explained briefly in the owner’s manual, we’re going to explain in further detail so you can learn how, when, and why you should use it (and perhaps more importantly, when you shouldn’t).
Although they are phasing out the P setting in newer models, many of their current grills still have this unique feature.
What is the Pit Boss P setting
Every temperature controller on a
“Smoke” and “High” are the only temperature settings on a
With the P setting, you can control the timing of the auger on a
The main purpose of the P setting is to allow the user to smoke “low and slow” during extreme temperatures since external temperatures can affect the internal cooking temperatures of the grill.
It has no influence on any other controller setting. “High” only has one set interval. It is meant for searing meat or vegetables over an open flame with the lid open.
How pellet grills work – the basics
Before we explain how the P setting works on a
- Hopper
- Auger
- Burn Pot
- Temperature Controller
- Ambient Temperature Probe
The hopper holds the pellets aside until the grill is turned on and activated by the temperature controller. Then, the auger spins and feeds a small amount of pellets into the burn pot where they are ignited.
Temperature is determined by how many pellets are fed into the burn pot within a specific amount of time. This timing is determined by the temperature setting on your controller and the internal ambient temperature of your grill.
The higher the temperature setting, the faster the pellets are fed into the pot.
Once the internal temperature probe in the grill reaches the temperature set on the controller, the auger slows down. If the temperature probe indicates a minor drop in ambient temperature, the auger will speed up until the set temperature is reached.
This explains why most pellet grills will have mild temperature swings during any cook.
The way these components work together is what makes pellet grills so appealing in the first place. When working properly, a pellet grill is a truly “set it and forget it” tool that eliminates the need to constantly monitor grill temperatures or learn how to be a master at fire management. When working properly, the pellet grill will do the hard work for you.
How does the P setting work?
The P Setting has different numbers to control the timing of the auger and how many pellets get fed into the burn pot. The default setting is 4 while the lowest setting is 1 and the highest setting is 6.
The “P” in P Setting stands for “Pause”. The numbers reflect how long the auger pauses before feeding more pellets into the burn pot.
The default setting of 4 is meant to set the internal ambient temperature of your
Now, this is where it gets confusing. The higher the setting, the slower the auger feeds pellets into the burn pot. In a normal environment, this will result in lower internal ambient temperatures. Conversely, the lower the P setting, the higher the temperature.
Recommended settings and adjustments
The P setting was designed to help your
Thus, if you’re trying to gently smoke a salmon at 180°F, your grill could easily reach internal ambient temperatures of 225°F or more, overcooking your salmon.
Adjusting the P setting above the default setting of “4” will help prevent this scenario from happening.
Now let’s say that you live in St. Paul Minnesota, and you’re looking to smoke that same salmon during December. Due to the extreme cold environment, you would want to set your P setting below 4 so your auger will feed pellets into the burn pot faster and keep the internal ambient temperature consistent.
An important note about the P setting
One thing that is important to point out, is that other than situations similar to what was described above, the P setting should be set at the default at 4.
During normal conditions, a high P setting can sometimes cause flameouts.
A flameout occurs when the fire goes out in the burn pot before more pellets are added to the fire. If you’re not watching the temperature of the grill, this can lead to a situation where a large amount of pellets are dumped into your grill.
Since there is no flame to burn the pellets off, over time a large amount of pellets can build up over the burn pot. If you were to turn the grill off and back on without clearing out that huge pile of pellets, all those pellets would ignite, causing a dangerous fire.
Pit Boss, as a company, debated whether or not to even talk about the P setting for fear that people would unnecessarily tinker with it. In older models, you could only adjust it with a needle or pin. They have since added a push button control to newer models, and have published content on their site explaining the P setting.
It is recommended to contact customer service if you still need guidance on how to use it properly.
Which Pit Boss grills have a P setting?
There are many
- The Pit Boss Sportsman Series
- The
Pit Boss Navigator Series - The
Pit Boss Mahogany 440D - The Original Pro Series
- The Austin XL
- Pit Boss’ including the 700FB , 820 FB, and 1000SC
Conclusion
While the P setting is a nice feature to have on your pellet grill, it is certainly not something to mess around with or take lightly. Adjusting it under the right conditions can be extremely helpful towards making your pellet grilling experience an enjoyable one.
We highly recommend checking out any
This forum has been more helpful in the book that came with the grill, therefore I say this has been the best instructional manual I have seen yet
Yes! It has been the best explained video yet! Thank you!!
This was more helpful than the manual instructions that came with my grill. Thank you!
This helped me so much! This article described my exact scenario! I live in Phoenix, it’s July 16 and currently 114* out. I set my pit boss to 225 and the temp climbed up to 350, leading me to believe that the smoker was broken or needed a good cleaning. After reading this article and setting the “p” to 7, it is consistently holding at 225. Great article, you learn something new every day!
I was thinking the same thing!! I live in Vegas and I’m just now figuring out the P setting. Mind blown after all the battles with the temperature settings. Even though the food would come out amazing, sometimes there were mistakes made.
What if the p setting light won’t stay on.and it only goes to 4 and goes back to 0
Sept 2022
Your article has soooo many mistakes and errors!! Jees!! You are supposed to have some knowledge, at least a little before you start writing for others (and, I would guess, making a profit of the website)
Let’s just focus on the most important thing – SAFETY!!!
It’s nice you have a video about flameout, but how about EXPLOSION!!! ?? Jump to YouTube and search for “TREAGER EXPLOSION” – that’s what’s not being told here!
This is caused by an interruption of power while running – it could be a loss of the electrical circuit, the unit came unplugged or you cycled the power to OFF and then back ON immediately while the unit is operating – any of these actions that cause power to cycle OFF and then back ON essentially re-starts the unit, as if you were turning it on for the first time that day.
This causes the unit to start all over and that means it does what it does every time – a continuous feed of pellets for 4 minutes, no way to stop it of shorten the feed time. The result is to, in essence, OVERFEED an existing fire, which causes excessive smoke, as shown in the YouTube videos. This smoke is combustible, it will ignite and burn. When you have excess fuel (smoke) in a confined space and it reaches ignition temperature (i.e., the firepot finally ignites the wood pellets ’cause the heating rod has been running this whole time in the Start mode), the smoke ignites and expands and your grill blows up!
THAT’S WHAT YOU SHOULD BE TALKING ABOUT!!
I’m not sure I understand your issue John, our article has a whole section on safety under the heading “An important note about the P setting”.
This article is about explaining what the P Setting does and how it works, it’s not an article about safety, so it wouldn’t make sense to start the article by talking about explosions. I also have no idea how Traeger explosions are relevant here.
As far as there being so many mistakes and errors, if you could point any out then I’m happy to look at them and see if there’s anything we could explain better.
Cheers.
I want more smoke at lower temperature. I have tried plugging the vents. Example is pork chops at 250° for 1.5 hours. I’m using pit boss hickory blend. The “p” set will not work to lower or raise the rate. I have also tried pre-loadeding the pot. I get more smoke that way but it gets too hot. I need help.
Hi Larry, The P setting only works in Smoke mode, not at set temps like 250°F. Try switching to Smoke mode and raising the P setting to P4–P6. This will feed pellets less often, giving you more smoke—but it also increases temperature swings and risks flameouts at the higher settings. A good workaround is adding a smoke tube for more smoke without raising the heat. Let me know if that helps.
VERY good points, this should have mentioned in the intro!
That’s not right when I lost power and then came back my Pit Boss stayed OFF, besides if we have no power pellets wouldn’t be feeding in to the pot and the only thing I did was turning on and moved the dial to “smoke” to ignite again.
Explosive smoke I’ve seen explosive vapors but explosive smoke since you obviously are an expert on this please share your knowledge bud I want to know this and how you came about this knowledge by all means please explain yourself. John H
Thank you, I was encountering flame outs all the time and of course can’t find the manual, so this should definitely help ! Thanks!
Great info here. I’m in SoCal desert with temps over 100 degrees everyday lately. Smoker was always above 240. Just set p value to 5. We’ll see.
I asked if I could replace my control to get the cold smoke setting like traeger Your article did not answer that
Nothing said anywhere about setting the p settings in the replacement bluetooth/wifi controller for the 820 grill. The maanual cdontroller failed and we insttalled the BT/WIFI controller. No instuctions anywhere that we could find and no instructions other than installation cme with the controller. Shame on you Pit Boss. Very poor customer interactions.
Have an Austin grill/smoker having hard time understanding setting. If I set the set the temperature at225 and p setting at 6 will the temp hold at or near 225
Hey Gene, the P setting will only affect things when the controller is set to “Smoke” mode. If you set it to 225, you don’t need to worry about the P Setting and the grill will try and hold around 225 automatically.
thank you for the info i had no idea what or how to set the p setting but thanks to you i understand how it works thank.
I know this is an older article but it has helped me a lot so I wanted to make a comment to say thanks.
I live in Canada and have had trouble smoking on my pellet grill because the default P4 would always keep my temp at 165. I didn’t want to mess around with the P setting in the past because I never really understood how it worked.
After reading your article, I played around with the P setting and at P2 I’m getting a consistent 225. Much better than setting to 225 because at that setting it would fluctuate between 220 and 260 and didn’t give the same quality smoke.
This is now my second time using the P setting and for me, there’s no going back.
Thanks for making such a straightforward guide!
PID controller, by using the P setting is makes it more proportional and takes integral and derivative out of the control loop.
I have a new Pit Boss 850. I’ve been reading about the P settings. It appears to me this is a way to adjust for temperature and conditions. I believe it also away for controlling the amount of smoke you might want to introduce to your food. If that’s the case, I tried setting the p-setting to 5, 4:00, 225 temp. It wouldn’t keep my setting, defaulting back to P1. Any ideas as to why?
P setting is only functional when set to smoke, all other setting work to keep the temp to the set temp and fluctuaton up to 30 or 40 degrees are not uncommon. It should roughly average the temp you set in the long run.
This is seriously poor engineering and even worse explanation. I bought this because i thought it would be great for smoking. I can’t get any good smoke in it at any temp. Wish i had my target back.
My grill temp just keeps going above what it is set to. It’s like the auger want cut off making a flame