Yoder YS640s Review: What Eleven Years of Real Cooks Taught Me

I bought my first Yoder YS640s in 2014 because I wanted to cook brisket properly. That was it. Not ribs, not chicken, not pulled pork. Brisket. It was the cut I could not get right on anything I had cooked on before, and at the time it was expensive and hard to find in Australia. Most butchers did not even know what you were asking for.

More than a decade later, we run Sydney's largest Yoder showroom at BBQ Republic, we fire up the orange YS640s Competition Cart in the showroom several times a week, and I have a standard YS640s at home that has been going since 2014. This is not a review written after a few weeks of testing. It is written after eleven years of actual cooks.

View our Yoder YS640s range or call 0434 010 411 to talk it through before you visit the showroom.

Why I Bought It

Back in 2014 there were not many pellet smokers on the Australian market worth taking seriously, and the serious BBQ community online kept pointing in one direction when someone asked what the best pellet smoker was. Yoder. Not even close, was the usual response.

The pitch that sold me was straightforward. Competition-grade build quality, genuine wood-fired flavour, and a controller that managed the fire so you could focus on the cook rather than the fuel. After years of managing fires manually, that last part mattered a lot.

What I did not fully appreciate until I had cooked on it for a few years was how much the build quality would matter over time. The 10-gauge steel construction is not a marketing point. It is something you understand differently after your first Sydney summer followed by a cold wet winter, and the grill just keeps performing exactly the same.

The Brisket Problem, and What the Yoder Taught Me

I will be honest about this because it is the most useful thing I can share with someone buying their first serious smoker.

For the first couple of years I ruined a lot of briskets. Not because of the grill. Because of me. I kept cooking to a timeline rather than a temperature.

The logic felt sound at the time. Calculate the cook time based on weight, work backwards from when I needed it ready, set an alarm, and expect to be eating at noon. Except brisket does not work that way. A 6kg flat might take 12 hours. It might take 16. The variables that affect cook time, the starting temperature of the meat, the ambient temperature outside, how the fat is distributed through the cut, whether the brisket stalls at 70 degrees for two hours or four, none of these are things you can calculate reliably in advance.

The lesson that stuck was one I should have learned earlier: it's done when it's is done.

I have served brisket that was undercooked and tough because I pulled it at noon regardless of what the thermometer said. I have overcooked some by not checking in time with a handheld probe and guessing wrong. Both outcomes come from the same mistake, which is trying to impose a schedule on a cook that runs on its own clock.

The reason this matters for a Yoder review is that the tools available now make this problem almost disappear. The current YS640s comes with the Fireboard controller built in. You have WiFi connectivity, real-time temperature graphing across the full cook duration, and wireless meat probe monitoring that tells you exactly where your brisket is at any given moment without lifting the lid. When I started in 2014 the original controller had none of this. Temperature management was a combination of the grill's built-in probe and a handheld thermometer at the end when you hoped you had timed it right.

The Fireboard integration changes brisket cooking for a first-time Yoder owner in a way that is hard to overstate. You set your temperature, load the brisket, and watch the probe graph on your phone. You can see the stall happening in real time. You know when the internal temperature starts climbing again. You pull the brisket when the probe reads what it should read, not when the clock says noon. The cook that used to require experience to get right is now accessible to someone on their first serious smoke.

What the 10-Gauge Steel Actually Does

Most pellet grills are built from thin sheet metal. The Yoder is not, and the difference is not subtle when you are standing next to both.

The 10-gauge steel construction gives the YS640s a thermal mass that thin-walled grills cannot replicate. Once the Yoder is at temperature it holds there. When you open the lid to check on a cook, the temperature drop is minimal and recovery is fast. When the ambient temperature drops overnight during a winter cook, the grill compensates with barely any adjustment to the vent and auger settings.

Over eleven years of cooking on ours in Sydney conditions, through summer heat and winter rain, the performance has been completely consistent. The grill I cook on today performs identically to the grill I lit for the first time in 2014. The metal has developed patina in places, which is normal for carbon steel and something Yoder supplies touch-up paint for, but every cook it delivers the same result.

That consistency is what a 10-year firebox warranty is actually backing. Yoder is confident in the construction because they have built thousands of these grills and know what the steel does over time.

Direct Flame Searing: The Feature That Surprises People

Most people who come into the showroom expecting a pellet smoker are surprised by the direct flame searing capability on the YS640s.

The Variable Displacement Damper allows you to open the grill for direct over-the-flame cooking at temperatures that exceed 700°F on the grate surface. This is not a standard pellet grill feature. Most pellet grills are indirect cookers by design and cannot produce genuine direct flame contact with food.

The practical result is that the Yoder replaces both a smoker and a gas grill. Low and slow at 110 degrees for a brisket and direct flame searing at full heat for a steak are available on the same cooker. We use both capabilities regularly and the direct flame result on a thick ribeye is meaningfully different to anything you get from an indirect heat finish.

Pellets: Why I Always Come Back to Contest Mix

Over eleven years I have cooked with every wood flavour available in the BBQr's Delight range and plenty of others. Hickory, apple, pecan, cherry, mesquite, oak, various blends.

I always come back to Contest Mix.

The reason is consistency. Contest Mix is a balanced hardwood blend designed for competition cooking, and what that means in practice is that it works with everything. Brisket, ribs, poultry, pork shoulder, fish, vegetables. The smoke profile is clean and versatile. It does not overpower delicate proteins the way straight hickory or mesquite can, and it delivers enough depth to matter on a long brisket cook.

There are good reasons to experiment with single-wood pellets for specific applications. Cherry on pork ribs is excellent. Apple on chicken is worth trying. But if you want one pellet that works reliably across every cook, Contest Mix is where you will end up. We stock it at BBQ Republic and it is what goes into the showroom grill for every demonstration cook.

The Wood-Fired Oven Attachment

The optional Wood-Fired Oven Attachment transforms the YS640s into a wood-fired oven. We have used this for pizza and the results are genuinely good. It is not an afterthought accessory. It is a well-designed addition that extends what the grill can do without compromising anything about the primary smoking and grilling capability.

If you bake bread or cook pizza regularly and want to do it on the same cooker as your smoking, the attachment is worth the addition. We can demonstrate it in the showroom.

Who the Yoder YS640s Is For

After eleven years of cooking on this grill, here is who I would recommend it to without hesitation.

Buy the Yoder if you take BBQ seriously and you want a grill that matches that commitment. If you have ever been frustrated by temperature instability, thin-walled grills that warp, or electronic systems that fail at the worst moment, the YS640s is the answer. It is built to a standard that most backyard grills do not approach.

Buy it if long brisket cooks are something you want to do regularly. The combination of the 10-gauge steel thermal mass and the Fireboard controller makes the Yoder the most capable long-cook pellet grill available. The lesson about time versus temperature still applies, but the Fireboard gives you the visibility to cook to temperature with confidence rather than guessing.

Buy it if you want one cooker that handles smoking and direct flame searing without buying separate appliances for each job.

At $6,099 for the standard cart it is a significant investment. The grill I bought in 2014 is still performing. When you divide the cost by eleven years of cooks, including hundreds of briskets, the economics look very different to the sticker price.

The Range We Stock

We stock the YS640s in three configurations. The grill is identical across all of them. What changes is the cart and colour.

The Standard Cart at $6,099 is the starting point and the same configuration as the grill we cook on at home. The Competition Cart at $8,199 is what we have in the showroom: a larger, more mobile cart with proper shelf space alongside the grill, available in signature Orange or limited edition Military Green. The Competition Cart with Drawer adds under-grill storage at $9,299 and is available in Silver or Orange.

All configurations are on display at our Wetherill Park showroom. We fire up the orange Competition Cart for demonstrations regularly. If you want to see the grill running and taste what it produces, come in.

Come and See It in Person

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