Dave's Masterbuilt 1050 Gravity Feed Experiences


 
I cooked the last of my Ribeyes. I was actually planning to do the cook on my Smokefire, but it was loaded with cherry pellets and that's not what I wanted to use for this cook. You all know what a chore it is to empty the pellets from the Smokefire without dumping half of them on your patio, so I fired the 1050 up again. The point of the cook was to test out the Grill Grates. I actually purchased a set (and still have them) for my Yoder YS1300 Comp smoker back in the day, but the plates were too to use on anything. Sure I could have cut them down, but I never did. Maybe I will one of these days.

This was the same cook as I did the other night but I did a few things differently:

1. I seasoned it with the rub only and not the flakes of salt up front.
2. I smoked with pecan instead of oak.
3. I cooked on the Grill Grates.
4. Oh... I had enough fuel in the 1050 this time. Duh!

I will say the first steak I made came out with better flavor this past weekend, but this one was cooked a bit better. I left the MEATER probe in the steak the entire time and if you guys don't have one of these, I HIGHLY recommend getting one. It's a very handy tool to have with no wires. I'd get a MEATER+ and call it good, though I have the MEATER Block which uses the older probes without as much Bluetooth range.

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Smoked to 108 degrees:
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Covered with aioli and set the 1050 to 610 degrees:
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Question for you all. What are these weird lines on my steaks? It's so weird!?!?!? :)
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Resting with dollops of butter placed on top:
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Both came up to around 131-133 degrees which is about perfect for me:
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Time to eat:
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So what did I learn on this cook?

1. The Grill Grates are freakin awesome! I see why so many people love these things.
2. Don't smoke with pecan. Oak had a far better flavor on the steak and I'll be sticking with oak going forward. Had to test it out since I wasn't sure.
3. Cook with the MEATER devices in for the whole cook. In the case of the 1050, flareups are minimized, especially with the drip shield I installed. With the Grill Grates that further mitigated. It made cooking them a lot easier since I kept my eye on the temps the entire cook.
4. The method I used in the prior cook was better and I'll be going back to that. The flavor profile was just a bit better, though the pecan could have influenced it negatively.
5. Using the proper amount of fuel sure makes the cook go a lot better. Duh again!

Overall, there was nothing wrong with these results. The steaks were great, but not as good as my previous cook. This just teaches us a lesson that once you find something which works really well, why go screwing with it? For me, I like to learn and experiment, so you win some and you lose some. Next time I want a steak? I'm going back to what I did during my prior steak cook.
 
Dave, thanks for an excellent forum on the Masterbuilt 1050. I am considering this grill myself and enjoyed your review. It has been 2 months, are you still enjoying the Masterbuilt or do you have additional thoughts? Thanks
 
By now Dave has probably moved on to a plasma sear machine with rotisserie. I mean afterall it has been 65 days.
I have been wondering what he has been up to. I miss his comprehensive and elucidating posts and engineering understanding.
Hmmm. Excess jets wasting away in the desert; old retired submarines repurposed and dismantled plants. Hmmm.
He may have to be a consultant on our new WGRC idea.
 
Tony-Chicago said:
By now Dave has probably moved on to a plasma sear machine with rotisserie. I mean afterall it has been 65 days.
I have been wondering what he has been up to. I miss his comprehensive and elucidating posts and engineering understanding.
Hmmm. Excess jets wasting away in the desert; old retired submarines repurposed and dismantled plants. Hmmm.
He may have to be a consultant on our new WGRC idea.
Click to expand...
Dave is the man! Glad we had him for a minute!
 
Nope. I'm still here. Sorry guys, been dealing with some family health issues. I just lost my Mom to cancer last Thursday, so it's been a difficult past month or two. Other than installing a mini-split AC unit in my garage, it's been pretty quite around here in terms of new stuff or projects.

I'm very happy with the Masterbuilt 1050 and have been using it quite a bit. I love the flexibility in that I can go from smoking something and then searing at 650+ within 10 minutes. There is a little bit of a learning curve with how much wood to use, but it runs quite well from my experience. I think for the price it's a very hard cooker to beat based on the flexibility and capacity.

It's obviously not as set it and forget it as a pellet cooker, but it does produce a different result when cooking. So far, I've not really been disappointed with it and see holding on to it.

I did have one issue with the fire box door switch. It's a simple plunger style switch and I don't know if I got a little water in there or if it was ash, but it stopped working consistently. I had to take it apart, clean up the contacts and put some dielectric grease in there which should help with future issues. Took about 15 minutes to fix and I didn't try to warranty it, but I'm sure Masterbuilt would have taken care of it.

Hope that helps! There's no doubt I'd buy it again.
 
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I am so sorry for the loss of your mom. Through this forum we have come to know you as a great and dynamic person. The talents you show, the skills you exhibit, and the generosity you display, have made you a favorite here. But they more prove that your mom was wonderful. I will close now while I try to stop crying.
 
Lost my mom when I was 30, takes a while to work all that out, sorry to hear about your mom Dave! I’m sure she was very proud!of you. Take care!!
 
I was looking for info on the Masterbuilt gravity models and came across this very informative thread. I can add a couple of bits of updated info on two issues noted.

Dave said the fire box door switch gave him issues. Amazing Ribs did a long-term review and had safety switch failures. They described how to bypass them in a jam and said: "We strongly believe Masterbuilt should replace these switches with better built ones on all sold and unsold models to prevent these errors and cooking interruptions."

A poster above said the metal in the firebox area burned out. Dave said he read about this issue and avoided it with the stainless steel insert. Amazing Ribs and its readers had the same experience, so they reached out to Masterbuilt. Here is what the company said:

The metal plates in the lower portion of the hopper hold the firebrick in place and protect it during shipping. These burn out and drop into the ash pan. They are not necessary for the grill to function and we’re not offering a replacement part, since they are meant to be temporary.
Click to expand...

More info about these issues is in the Amazing Ribs review of MB 560
 
Yeah - the switches and weak WIFI are the only real issues I've experienced with the Masterbuilt. I've been using it a fair amount and it produces some of the best BBQ I've ever made and runs like a top. Bypassing the switches is easy, just jumper both wires on each connector to one another, but I do think sealed switches or magnetic proximity switches like are used on things like Southern Pride smokers would have been a better solution. The only downside I've had is the fuel consumption is a bit more than I'd expect, but I'm using lump and not briquettes.

I've vote it most versatile cooker I've owned and I've owned a LOT of them. Super Bowl cook:

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I bought the 560 at Walmart last month, on sale for $250. Its far exceeded my expectations. I've had four cooks, chicken, brisket, sausage, and some chicken thighs. It does burn a lot of charcoal, I've gone through a 30# bag of B&B Char Logs. But since its not my only cooker, that's not a big deal.

I'm using it as a smoker and I'm very happy with the smoke it produces. It has good air flow. And very versatile. I'll deal with the switches if and when that problem arises. As to the metal burning out in the hopper, Tom Horsman cooks on his all the time and has no problem with it. He bought the OEM replacement parts last summer and to my knowledge has never installed the parts.
 
Great review Dave, I just picked up an EX4 that I got for a hell of a deal and now after reading this thread and others I want one. Our local HD has two old versions in stock and won’t budge on price even after showing the manager pictures of others receipts buying at a huge discount. I may wait till the newer version hits the floor.
 
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