First cooks

[DanaM]

Busy weekend but got in a couple of cooks and beyond happy with the results.
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[Grey]

Reverse seared ribeyes, Turned out perfect Loving the new smoker!

 

[CEd4jets]

Beef back ribs. Insane according to my wife.

 

[ROZ!]

Reverse seared ribeyes, Turned out perfect Loving the new smoker!

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Lord that looks good. I know What my next cook will be! Any tips?

 

[Grey]

Lord that looks good. I know What my next cook will be! Any tips?

I seasoned them about an hour before grilling them and put them back in the fridge. Set the smokefire to 275 about 15 minutes before taking them out of the fridge. Put them on the top rack and probed them, 4 steaks using the weber probs, until they hit 110. Pulled them and set the grill to 550. Seared for 1:10, flipped, 1:10, flip, 1:10, and flip one last time for 1:10. Pulled them and rested covered for about 10-15 minutes. Turned out perfect! Steaks were choice ribeyes from Costco and roughly about an inch or more thick.

 

[tigermikie]

Fired up the EX6 for its first cook last night. I put a stuffed pork loin and some green onion sausage on at 275. Controller started up perfectly and when it reached the desired temp I put the meat on. I did use a meat probe and a second ambient temp thermometer by ThermoWorks. It was an enjoyable cook with no issues. I had placed the ThermoWorks thermometer in the front of the grill kind of catty cornered from the rear one. The temp on the front stayed between 270-278 for the entire cook, other than when the door was opened.
The only potential issue I had was with the infamous pellet hopper. I filled it with Weber pellets. As with other grillers I found a large dip started right over the augur. It was probably 4 inches high. How the pellets held their place was beyond me.

My conclusion is that on this particular cook, the grill and app worked perfectly. On my iPhone it gave me all kinds of instructions for the grill, though I couldn’t control any of it from the phone.

If it weren’t for the bad experiences had by others in this forum and on uTube I would have given the smoker an 8 out of 10. BUT....after seeing last nights video by Justin of Baby Back Maniac, I‘m rethinking my SmokeFire. I felt sorry for the guy as he had been really impressed when he saw the smoker in action in Chicago. The hopper issues, the sparks flying everywhere during the cook, and most scarily the grease fires lead me to believe this version of the SmokeFire is doomed. These are design flaws and not something that can be patched. I am only a ”bean counter” and know nothing about engineering, but I do know when something doesn’t work as it is advertised. This smoker will need to go back to the drawing board.

I will keep the smoker for a couple more weeks just to see what Webers plans are on making this fiasco right. As I’ve said before this is my 4th Weber grill. My charcoal Summit is my ”go to” grill and I love it. I‘m afraid that the stellar reputation of Weber has seriously tarnished.

Finally, we were all like kids on Christmas Eve waiting for the arrival of this smoker and we now feel like Santa has left us nothing but a bag of coal.

 

[bishoman]

This video shows a brisket that was started on the SmokeFire then had to be finished in the kitchen oven because the grill started going cold after 2 hours of running.

 

[bishoman]

Follow up: Repairs for the problem in the above video.

 

[abmet]

Follow up: Repairs for the problem in the above video.

Hope that solves your issue. Thanks for sharing. I had similar experience in terms of time to get up to temp. For burn-in it was 10 degrees and took 20 minutes to hit 600. At 30 and 45 it took about 20 minutes to get to 225 an 250 respectively. I noticed the fan never ran as high on those lower temps. I think this is by design as helps to prevent overshooting the lower temps. I personally like it as the lower fan speeds seems to allow the ash to drop into the drawer better and not as much in the cook box.

 

[bbqking]

Breh, it is what it is. And I get a little peeved at the naysayers. Don’t let others experience....sway your mind. Try it for yourself. It’s a pellet grill. If you use a kettle or smoker, or gasser, you have to monitor that...to me stirring or pushing pellets around is nothing. My SmokeFire is a 1st gen with no new parts...it’s still humming along just fine. (I did add the ramp insertion, and a fuse...but that’s nothing)

 

[Bruno]

I’ve had a SmokeFire from day one, I did 3 things to make it run like I hoped it would.

1) Updated everything, every time.
2) pulled the finger guard
3) added welded auger chute

It was good before it’s been flawless since the welded auger and finger guard removal. I’ve cooked a ton low and slow and high heat.

I’m on my first glow plug and I use a 15-20 foot extension cord, no issues. No fuses no plugs!

 

[vckiter]

Did you to manually “stir” the pellets from time to time to be sure that they didn’t create a hollow and quit feeding the auger? I’m hoping not. We shouldn’t need to babysit the pellet hopper.

I've had a "hollow" as you say during probably half my cooks. Usually the unit tells me the pellets are low via alarm on my phone and I'll push pellets over. Yes, the ramp is not steep enough. But, it will run for about 6-8 hours before you get an alert. So if I were ever brave enough to smoke overnight I'd have to make sure the hopper was full just "above" the pellet auger, to make sure enough pellets made it into the fire chamber to let one sleep a full night. I'll probably never try that though.

 

[vckiter]

Was going to do a chuck roast but it's getting late so we cooked hamburgers. Set the temp to 400 and used probe to cook to internal temp of 155. Tasted great. No much for searching marks... any suggestions? I'll try 450 next time.

I like 550. Any lower and you have to leave it on too long to get good grill marks which will likely over-cook the meat. Personally I have been using my gas grill next to the smoke fire. I just move the items over when the smoke is over. Saves pellets and time.

 

[bbqking]

What are you planning for your first real cook and for your “burn in” cook?

Im going to try my “new smoker” routine:

1. burn hot with nothing on the grill for an hour or two - de crud and de-chemical it

2. Render down some pork belly. It’s cheap and splatters

3. Sausage or a fatty. I like to just take a couple of pounds of hot Italian sausage and make a single “football” of fatty meat. Cook at 225 until done

4. Ribs. Hard to screw up but hard to really do perfect. Helps me to figure everything out.


THEN - I’m going to try a steak. I need to see if it can.

I’ve actually had very good results with cooking steak. I crank it up to at least 400-500 when doing them.. done flank, ribeye, tbone, and others.

 

[bbqking]

1 Burn-in (with probe army) (Excel charts!!!)
2 Wings (to find my hot spots)
3 Ribs (4 racks)
4 Two Butts and 2 Briskets

Just need the grill! I’ve got a “Whiskey and Wine Valentine” party this weekend with 20 couples coming. Really don’t want to “buy” the food - is rather cook it.

Yo, I would love to see pics of this cook, if you do it.