This question got me thinking more about how I got to be a fan of CookinPellets - the purpose of sharing is more about flavors that brands, I'm not trying to push the brand, they're great, but you all do you and buy what makes you happy. I started using them when Traeger was the only brand you could generally buy in a store and the only other things I ever saw available here locally were if you hunted down a dealer with Lumberjack or Green Mountain Grills.
Anyway, I was a member of a forum that was dedicated to pellet grills and did a lot of pellet grill and industry reviews called Pelletheads.com. Unfortunately, they disappeared a few years ago when the owner passed away. A group on the forum that judged/competed in BBQ contests together (using pellet grills) did a blind pellet species taste.
They rounded up 4 pellet grills and one gasser and one of them cooked a few foods: Ribs, Chicken, Burgers, and fish with 4 different pellet flavors: 100% hickory, maple, cherry and walnut. Then the 9 others in the group did a blind tasting. 6 of the 9 were certified KCBS judges and one of the judges was a pretty famous name.
Hickory was the only thing correctly identified repeatedly and that was only buy a couple testers on each food. Cherry was identified on 1-2 foods by a tester or two, but the color might have given it away. Even the 'control' gas grill got a couple votes for various smoke flavors.
I've followed a small group of them to another forum that one of them started after pelletheads disappeared, and most of them run the mindset of buying whatever is cheapest to run in their pellet grills. A couple of them use CookinPellets for the same reasons I do, less dust in bags than many others, less ash in pit because they don't use bark in their pellets, and a little stronger flavor than a primarily oak brand.
I ran Weber pellets in the SmokeFire to avoid issues as it seemed to run better on them, especially in mid temps (300-400), but I think the poor experiences I saw were the firmware updates not the pellets. When I tried to switch over to CookinPellets as it was September or October after I had used up all my Weber pellets. I ran into problems than switched back to Weber to eliminate that variable, but still had issues. However, the few cooks I did with the CookinPellets, I didn't pick up a flavor difference between the GrillMaster blend and the CookinPellets Perfect Mix. The only species difference between the two would be that CookinPellets adds apple, they both have hickory, maple, and cherry.
The SmokeFire was the first pellet grill I ever made anything too smoky for for my own tastes and this was at high temps with things like a pizza. So, that's why I ran the blends on the SmokeFire versus 100% Hickory, so maybe more people will be able to pick up species differences with the SmokeFire than other pellet grills.
I'm not at all discounting that some people can definitely tell the difference, I'm just sharing the experience that from what I've seen it seems like the majority of us cannot identify different species by smoke flavor outside of mesquite, especially in pellets.
(EDITS: I found a summary of the test and cleaned up some details and I did not remember accurately and formatting for readability. It sounded like these 'judges' thought they could all identify smoke tastes before the test was done and were surprised at their own poor results. I also added the note about my perception of the SmokeFire having more smoke)
I do like B&B Championship blend and Pit Boss competition blend. I like pure apple pellets. Taste is so subjective and it's definitely a "different strokes for different folks" thing. We all end up trying different pellets. I am compelled to add that 29 years of eating really good Navy chow did not give me a sophisticated palate. 
Well **** I was typing grill master blend until I read your post! 
