To make this abundantly clear – you shouldn’t soak wood pellets before smoking.
Wet pellets are especially problematic in a pellet grill where you could potentially clog the auger and ruin your grill.
Truth be told, you shouldn’t soak wood at all prior to smoking whether they’re pellets, wood chips, chunks, etc. More on that discussed below.
What Happens When Pellets Come into Contact with Water?
Rather than simply taking my word for it, I opted to take a handful of pellets from my hopper and put them in a bowl of water.
I then took observations and pictures to demonstrate what happens when wood pellets are soaked in water.
This handful of pellets went into the water at 2:52 pm:
This is the pellets 30 minutes later at 3:22 pm:
I then drained the water and dumped the contents onto a paper towel after 30 minutes.
I also took a video of me slightly applying pressure with my finger tips.
As you can see, the pellets crumbled away.
Now the biggest reason this is problematic is that your auger can get jammed. Meaning, you’d have to completely take your pellet grill apart in order to clear the jam.
You may be able to purge this material but if it solidifies, it’s like a cement and you’d be hard pressed to purge the auger.
The above reason is why when you store your pellets, you want them off the ground.
Soaking Wood is a MYTH That Needs to Go Away
Wood chips and chunks DO NOT need to be soaked before smoking.
I proved this is another article but here’s the photos for reference.
Here’s after 24 hours of soaking:
Here’s a picture of the wood chips:
As we can see, there is almost no water penetration, even when submerging the wood for 24 hours.
Meaning, soaking wood isn’t even worthwhile, even when submerged for 24 hours.
Even still, the water needs to vaporize before it smolders so all you’re doing is delaying the wood from smoking. If you open the grill at any time it still has the same potential to combust if you didn’t soak it.
