Some personal experiences with my EX6 that may help:
- Low and slow cooking for brisket and pork shoulder etc...has been a dream, I've also found the pellet usage at these low temps to be perfectly acceptable to the point where I really don't mind leaving the meat on the smokefire after wrapping it to get through the stall. You could easily save some pellets by putting the meat in the oven after wrapping as no more smoke flavour will really be added at this point. Here in the UK, I have managed to get some deals on Weber pellets to the tune of around 13GBP per bag which no doubt plays some role in my pellet usage. I can't comment on 35AUD a bag, unfortunately.
- A quick and dirty, high temp evening BBQ is where I had completely underestimated this bit of kit. Fired the grill up and set to 250 celsius (sorry, Fahrenheit means very little me!), and by the time it had come up to that temp, I'd cooked the burgers and sausages and hit shutdown, the grill had only been on for a total over about 30 mins and the pellet level in the hopper had barely moved. 15 minutes after that, I was full of food and the cover was back over it. Also, the whole "lid down" thing is nothing more than a slight learning curve, I barely even think about it.
- My currently preferred technique when reverse searing steaks is to smokeboost them up to the desired internal temperature and then dunk them straight into a ripping hot cast iron pan over high heat to finish. I've personally found that there is very little difference between this method and waiting to flame sear on the smokefire. It may not win a BBQ comp, but it makes everyone in this house extremely happy. I haven't tested on any guests yet because of that whole "C" word thing.
- Last quick note, the Thai green curry that I did in my GBS wok the other week has ruined my life. I now can't eat out at a Thai restaurant for fear of being disappointed
