My favorite so far has been the Bear Mountain doug fir pellets. Burned well and produced almost no ash at all. I only had to clean things out every 2-3 weeks or so. I burned a couple of tons of them 2 years ago but I haven't been able to find any for a decent price since that batch. I got these for $200 a ton 2 years ago with free delivery.
I tried the Cleanburn doug fir pellets but they produced a lot of white powder that I am pretty sure was salt. I think they are using driftwood or logs that spent too long in the ocean or something. They also burn really well and made no ash but I didn't like the idea of my iron/steel stove being filled with salt and pellet smoke which is mostly steam and CO2. Sounded like a great way to corrode out the burning pot. They were also pretty expensive at about $300 per ton. Cheapest I've ever seen them was $275 per ton.
My second favourite is the Eagle Valley softwood premium pellets. They burn well, nice and hot and light fast. They make a bit more ash than either of the doug fir pellets I've tried but none of that white "salt" that the cleanburns made. I burned about 4-5 tons of them last year and I just loaded up with them again for this year. I got them for $200 a ton both times with free delivery. With these, I have to clean out the stoves about every 10 days but I tend to do them once a week because I always have time to do it on Monday mornings and they run longer on the weekends (thermostat is set for higher temps during the day because we are home). Some weeks I was too busy or forgot and I was able to go 2 weeks between cleaning but things did get a bit messy and I started having some issues with ash blocking the igniter in one of my stoves. The other stove didn't have problems but it has an agitator in the burn pot and the igniter is like a little heat gun so it never gets plugged up because it's blasting air out the port. I find that these burn hotter than the doug fir pellets but all in all, I use the same amount of pellets either way.
From what I can tell, hardwood vs softwood only matters for cordwood and even then, it's a case of BTU per pound of wood being about the same but hardwood being a LOT heavier. I did notice that the bags of doug fir pellets are quite a bit smaller physically than the softwood pellets but 40 lbs is 40 lbs. My stoves do have 2 independent settings for wood type (soft or hard) and each has its own feed trim and combustion air trim setting. I accidentally burned softwood pellets on the hardwood setting once and it made a LOT more ash and a LOT of smoke (took a long time to clean the glass off afterwards!!) So it is important to recalibrate things if you switch and you don't have a sensor in the stack to auto calibrate things!! I wonder if this is the reason why a lot of people have a really strong preference for one type over the other, if they didn't recalibrate when they tried a new kind and their burn was totally off and so they got a bad impression of the new kind of pellets?
With my old woodstove before I replaced it with the pellet stove it made a HUGE difference because I was limited by the volume of the firebox. If I filled it with Maple or Arbutus it would burn a LOT longer than if I filled it with pine!! I suppose that with the doug fir pellets I was probably getting away with only refilling the stove hoppers every 1.5 to 2 days on average days and with the softwood pellets I have to fill them every day on average days and twice a day on cold days, so there's that.
I also (unfortunately) tried some FireMaster pellets I got at home depot. They made a LOT of ash and really made the inside of the stove dirty. I had to clean it all out about twice a week
never going to try that again. I've heard similar stories from a lot of people about those. Yes I did try to recalibrate it and adjust the feed and air trim but even with them set perfectly, those pellets were like burning those rubber pellets made for old tires that they use in some playgrounds.
