Dave's Smokefire EX6 Experiences


 
Barb and I shop about once a week. We also take advantage of sales especially with meat and non perishables. Between the fridge in the house we also have a fridge in the garage along with a large vertical freezer. All of them are completely full. We also have a large pantry in the garage that we store can goods and other things that don't have to be chilled or frozen.
I try to avoid going to often as our area needs a couple more grocery stores and the stores are very busy all day long.
One thing we do is every week we sit down and plan out a menu for the up coming week. We verify that we have everything for each meal and only buy the things we don't have. We've been doing this for years and it does save a lot of money.
 
Sure does save money and diets. Smart. Right idea. I propose itt several times a year but out-voted. One to one. Wish I had the control to do the same. We do stock up when cans are on sale.
 
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I got a big order delivered today from Costco. It's going to be angus burgers a bit later. Tomorrow I have a rack of beef back "dino" ribs that Safeway thought to substitute for baby back ribs. lol. I have some new rub to try on those. Trying to get back to some sense of normality around here. :)
 
I've been craving some ribs, so today is the day. I'm doing a 2x2x30 method at 265 degrees as set on the controller. I just wrapped them with some dry rub, BBQ sauce, apple juice, butter and honey.

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Two more hours and I'll unwrap them to see how they look. If the bones have good pullback then I'll lightly season with a bit more dry rub and put some sauce to set for 30 or so minutes.
 
Jason in CA said:
I really want a covered grilling area! The weather has been,,, well you know exactly what my weather is..:(
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Yeah. I had a 17x40' patio cover installed about seven years ago with three skylight strips, two fans, two track lights and three lantern lights. Everything is configured with Philips Hue bulbs so I can set the colors and brightness however I like. I installed mini-track lights 4' back from the wall on the house so that I could aim them into my cooking equipment. It's worked pretty well for me from a cooking standpoint. I wish at times it was enclosed though.

I've got 1.55" of rain in Elk Grove since midnight. This is the most rain of the year in a single day since Feb of 2019 when I got over 2" in a single day. Pretty potent storm for April considering our dry winter.
 
I overshot the cook a bit. I need to put my temp probe back inside of the cooking chamber because before the firmware update, my EX6 would typically lag below the set point. However at 265 degrees, I probably should have pulled the ribs 30 minutes earlier. They still came out very tasty, but a little too much of the "fall off the bone" style.

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Andrew F said:
It sounds like things are going well for you now. What is your final list of mods?
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Good question. I still have a Weber gourmet grate kit I want to install to see how that goes. I also intend to do some work on testing out airflow in the fire pot one of these days. I'm happy with the mods I've done so far but I don't know if I'll ever be done. I've got a side stainless handle to install and a few other odds and ends.

All is not perfect in the performance land with my EX6 though. Had some slow rise issues and I do need to replace the chute when the updated one shows up. My controller is randomly freezing up again as well, so Weber wants me to take the electronics compartment apart to reseat some of the cables.
 
Dave - Unixadm said:
All is not perfect in the performance land with my EX6 though. Had some slow rise issues and I do need to replace the chute when the updated one shows up. My controller is randomly freezing up again as well, so Weber wants me to take the electronics compartment apart to reseat some of the cables.
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Ive had the same slow rise deal, it’s very random.
Too bad about the controller, I put the chute in the garage and will get to that some day. It’s cooking fine for now.
 
The best thing about the EX6 is the flavor of the food it cooks. It truly is a step above other pellet cookers. I do know the hopper slide, chute and auger assembly did help as I've had no pellet feed issues since installing those updates. With that said, there may be some feed issues in the chute still occurring which are not as severe to cause a flameout. That's my hunch with why they are replacing it with a welded assembly. I also didn't like that the original design leaks, which is why I put a smear of RTV on the new gasket I received before assembling. One thing with the welded chute is I will have to remove the hopper assembly which I've not had to do previously.
 
Dave - Unixadm said:
The best thing about the EX6 is the flavor of the food it cooks. It truly is a step above other pellet cookers. I do know the hopper slide, chute and auger assembly did help as I've had no pellet feed issues since installing those updates. With that said, there may be some feed issues in the chute still occurring which are not as severe to cause a flameout. That's my hunch with why they are replacing it with a welded assembly. I also didn't like that the original design leaks, which is why I put a smear of RTV on the new gasket I received before assembling. One thing with the welded chute is I will have to remove the hopper assembly which I've not had to do previously.
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The hopper assembly is removed by taking off 4-5 screws. It can off pretty easily.
 
Matt Q said:
The hopper assembly is removed by taking off 4-5 screws. It can off pretty easily.
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Yeah. I figured it wasn't too bad. Hopefully the chute ships but I probably won't race to install it until I burn through the hopper of pellets. The pellet dump on the Smokefire is a pretty crappy design.
 
Dave - Unixadm said:
Yeah. I figured it wasn't too bad. Hopefully the chute ships but I probably won't race to install it until I burn through the hopper of pellets. The pellet dump on the Smokefire is a pretty crappy design.
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i dislike the whole design of the hopper. It is awkward to feed, gets stuck on crevices, and the dump goes everywhere (or gets stuck).
 
After using the Smokefire for a while, I would say it has the worst hopper design of any pellet cooker I've owned and that's been a bunch. I spilled pellets the last time I was loading it.
 
I’ve been cutting a corner of the bag and going slow, it’s annoying spilling pellets.
 
I get the bags and immediately empty them into one of these bins. I bought one for each type of pellet that I use. The width of the hopper is about the same as the bin and I haven't spilled any. To change pellets I put it under the slide and rest a bucket on top. What doesn't go into the bucket goes into the bin, which is where I pour the bucket anyway.

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Dave - Unixadm said:
I swapped in the welded chute today and now my glow plug has failed. I've verified it has 24 volts and is making good contact, but it's dead. Meh. Emailed Weber support for a replacement.

I'll post up some pics of the swap in a bit.
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So you still have a Broke Fire? Sorry, I've been reading and watching videos on this thing since the beginning. Now I'm getting bored. Maybe one day this social distancing thing will pass and we can get together for that beer and BBQ. On that note, I've got some duck and bacon sausage from Swingle meat I've been very interested in trying. Time to get a fire going. :coolkettle:
 
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