EX6 - Not loving it


 
Darryl - swazies said:
I would ask her if the car or the bbq should be out back on the deck/patio......
She what she says..........hahahaha.....
This will put you in the bad books for the if you do probably...
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But, I’d have to cover and uncover all the time and the Ranch would only get used maybe twice a year.
 
Darryl - swazies said:
I am not sure which pat of your post(s) are sarcasm and which are not.....
The lid is hinged....I have the second generation....it's a breeze to lift.
It's not massive in size, fits 2 briskets or shoulders with a breeze.
They are bigger than a kettle for sure, but they can do so much work.........
Grates are simple.....
The temps can be lowered with ease it just takes longer but that goes without saying as it is the same with the insulation with holding temps....
I am under the weather today and my head feels like it isn't on straight......trying to make sense here.......
Basically the E6 is simple, like any other tool in this world you just have to understand it.
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Darryl, holy sheet guy.

We are on a thread where a guy is complaining about temp fluctuations that are a NORMAL operating function. He can’t seem to wrap his head around that fact and it makes him uncomfortable.

And I replied, tongue in check, sarcastically, about the Kamado and three guys have argued or said I’m wrong because….I guess sarcasm isn’t….man I don’t know. Tough crowd sometimes. Sigh.

So, my ENTIRE original post about the Kamado….I don’t feel any of that. It was tongue in cheek, humor, pretty obvious not serious.

And I put money the entire lid of the Summit/Kamado is heavier than a kettle. But I’m not taking mine apart so someone else feel free to take theirs apart, weigh, and come back and tell me I’m wrong.

Humor guys. Relax
 
TimA said:
You clearly missed the sarcasm…

And those are actually all 100% accurate, because they are all concerns I’ve seen and heard raised about the Summit and Kamado over the years. Feel free to search all the way back to 2016 when the Summit launched; the lid is heavy, that’s why it’s got the hinge it does, they are big and bulky compared to a kettle, this very forum continues to have question about the charcoal grate, and yes if you overshoot target temp they aren’t easy to bring down.

For the record, in case anyone doesn’t know, mine is a 2016 that I’ve owned since 2019 (brand new from dealer, their floor model). It’s hands down the best cooker I own.
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My bad. I guess I make mine a bit more over the top. My apologies for the subsequent flames that are arising here.

Yes, without the springs, the WSK lid is very heavy but the springs do make it open with two fingers. As for the charcoal grate, I’ve never had any issues on when to use either position and for which cooks.

I do admit to my first cook being ridiculously dumb. Dumping a bunch of KPro into it and then realizing I added way too much coal and concluding the WSK will take all my money if I didn’t figure out how to cook with it, and quickly.

On temps though, it’s really easy to reset to lower temps. Burp the unit and cinch the lower vent down to its lowest position, close er up and then wait 5-10 minutes.

I guess I haven’t overshot temps in a long time now. I just let er ride and occasionally make micro adjustments.

Again, my bad for not getting the sarcasm.
 
Greg Ross-MN said:
I'm a fan of multiple grill/smoker tools if you have the space. They all have their place IMO. Sometimes I don't want to build a fire and just want to push a button instead.
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That’s a great point. I’ve come up with my lazy man’s fire starting method for this reason.

Load the CBs with the coal you need, place two bacon greased napkins in each CB apart from each other, and torch light the coals and leave the WSK lid open. Hot fire in around 10 minutes. And if you place the cooking grate atop your CBs, you can cut short the grate heat up too.

I usually budget 20 minutes before I put food on the WSK. I’ve just learned to start the fire first and then play with the proteins.

Either way, all grills need some sort of heat up. Avoiding using the chimney does help with simpler cooks.
 
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TimA said:
And I replied, tongue in check, sarcastically, about the Kamado and three guys have argued or said I’m wrong because….I guess sarcasm isn’t….man I don’t know. Tough crowd sometimes. Sigh.
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Throwing in a quick emoji isn't a bad way to let folks know you're just kidding around. Even old school : ) or ; ) if you're lazy like me and don't want to click the emoji icon. :)
 
I missed the sarcasm myself......
I'm sick as a dog and can barely see the screen so nothing makes sense to me right now....
 
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Rich Dahl said:
As I get older the words "simple to use" become key in my selection process. All my grills are non-remote monitored, that's what my Smoke is for. Easy to use and accurate and no upgrades in the middle of something.
Call me old, slow and full of fleas, but that's the way I like things now.
Talk about wild swings, my non PID controller on the Camp Chef was swinging +- 45-55 degrees when set at 225! The alarms on the Smoke picked it up. Picked up a new Camp Chef PID Gen 2 controller for $50.00 on Amazon a month ago during their big sale. A $100 less that Camp Chef sells it for.:)
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You are old, slow, and full of fleas but we all have warts. :ROFLMAO: Nothing wrong with the way you think.
 
Even a indoor oven is gonna have temp swings. Using more then one thermo is gonna drive you wonky ( been there done that ). Pick one and stick with it.
 
timothy said:
Even a indoor oven is gonna have temp swings. Using more then one thermo is gonna drive you wonky ( been there done that ). Pick one and stick with it.
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Yeah, my piece of junk VERY expensive LG stove cannot hold within 50 deg! My pellet grills are WAY better
 
So, this is kind of what I was talking about. It was a nice day, around 60 degrees with no wind. I did a ham.

My original plan was to start with a smoke boost to hit it with some extra smoke. That is supposed to run around 180 or so, right? Well, it was running between 230-260 or so. I think I was averaging 243. Honestly, that would be fine for me for most cooks. I was going to keep it there, but I wrapped it with foil, so I didn't feel like I needed to waste the extra smoke. So I set it to 225 and it jumps up to nearly 325. I let it level off a bit, but it was still running like 275 or so. I finally said screw it and set the smoke boost back.

Again, the ham turned out fine. I just want a bit more precision. I had that with my WSM. I love the convenience of the Smoke Fire, don't get me wrong. But I've never had any luck with the sear option and the fluctuations are just too much. It's hard to pin down how long a cook is going to take. I fully accept that maybe it's something I am doing wrong or maybe I just don't understand pellet grills. But my Camp Chef was way cheaper and doesn't fluctuate this much. And the glow plugs don't go out on me randomly. And the pellets don't get stuck when feeding them.

Not trying to offend anyone. Don't want anyone to take anything personally if you work for Weber or something. Just saying that with all the different Weber products I own, this is the only one that I don't love. I thought the convenience of it would weigh out favor of it, but I'm not sure. Actually now I'm debating getting a kamado with the shelf and ditching my performer, then keeping the smoke fire, just for convenience sake.
 

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Lew Newby said:
You are definitely not the first to be disappointed. I'm tickled with mine. I ask new Smokefire/pellet grill owners a lot of questions Is it a Gen1 or Gen2? I'm admin on a FB Smokefire group and try to help some of our 10K members troubleshoot problems so I hope I don't offend you. Thousands of good Smokefire glow plugs have been thrown in the trash. Did you confirm that the glow plug was bad with a meter? I ask because a lot of times the problem is a bad ground contact. Pic below works on a Gen1 or Gen2 and ensures a good contact. As far as temp
fluctuations go, all PID controlled grills fluctuate within a range. My RecTec and Camp Chef did. The PID controller shows set temp as long as the thermocouple is reading a temp within the range. Once you adjust to that, it's no big deal. The food still tastes great.

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Thanks. I'm a member of that Facebook group and it's been very helpful to me. It's a great group.I appreciate it!!
 
Jacob said:
.......

Not trying to offend anyone. Don't want anyone to take anything personally if you work for Weber or something. Just saying that with all the different Weber products I own, this is the only one that I don't love. I thought the convenience of it would weigh out favor of it, but I'm not sure. Actually now I'm debating getting a kamado with the shelf and ditching my performer, then keeping the smoke fire, just for convenience sake.
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And noone should be offended. The Smokefire has it's warts. Some don't have many and some have a lot. Our grills are different. I don't and never worked for Weber but seeing the redesigns in the Stealth and Sear+ Weber knows it has warts. If they ever get the open cook chamber design right I might upgrade from my EX6. Smoke on.
 
@Jacob I think you've been tactful in sharing your concerns; we should be allowed to share a level of frustration if an item isn't working satisfactorily. I had a horrible experience with my first SmokeFire in terms of temperature, even during the initial startup. I returned it but eventually bought another one, which is much more stable, though I do have an occasional frustrating experience with respect to pellet feeding.

I'm also confused that sometimes the temp variance between the left side and right side is significant yet, at other times, each side runs dead even (according to my Fireboard thermometer). During a Saturday cook they were dead even aside for times when I opened the lid or adjusted the pit temp:

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Hopefully, you get this sorted out favorably for yourself.
 
BFletcher said:
@Jacob I think you've been tactful in sharing your concerns; we should be allowed to share a level of frustration if an item isn't working satisfactorily. I had a horrible experience with my first SmokeFire in terms of temperature, even during the initial startup. I returned it but eventually bought another one, which is much more stable, though I do have an occasional frustrating experience with respect to pellet feeding.

I'm also confused that sometimes the temp variance between the left side and right side is significant yet, at other times, each side runs dead even (according to my Fireboard thermometer). During a Saturday cook they were dead even aside for times when I opened the lid or adjusted the pit temp:

View attachment 84282

Hopefully, you get this sorted out favorably for yourself.
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Temp/humidity and wind conditions play a HUGE factor no matter the grill. Hell even an old reliable Genesis sidewinder is GREATLY affected by these things and look how different it is with 3 long burners, fully distributing flame under a tamer system from front to back and side to side. IDK if perhaps too much is expected out of the SF Jacob has, or there is a simple easily fixed fault. After all how complicated can it be? You have a central fire. Fire is fire, the only thing that will vary that fire is how quickly fuel is fed to it. Well there are only a couple factors there. A sensor and a controller. Save for any other mechanical or electromechanical failure in the feeding system. But even that is simple enough. Given how good Weber seems to have been working with their SF customers I cannot believe they would be unwilling to help diagnose and get it repaired
 
Jacob said:
So, this is kind of what I was talking about. It was a nice day, around 60 degrees with no wind. I did a ham.

My original plan was to start with a smoke boost to hit it with some extra smoke. That is supposed to run around 180 or so, right? Well, it was running between 230-260 or so. I think I was averaging 243. Honestly, that would be fine for me for most cooks. I was going to keep it there, but I wrapped it with foil, so I didn't feel like I needed to waste the extra smoke. So I set it to 225 and it jumps up to nearly 325. I let it level off a bit, but it was still running like 275 or so. I finally said screw it and set the smoke boost back.

Again, the ham turned out fine. I just want a bit more precision. I had that with my WSM. I love the convenience of the Smoke Fire, don't get me wrong. But I've never had any luck with the sear option and the fluctuations are just too much. It's hard to pin down how long a cook is going to take. I fully accept that maybe it's something I am doing wrong or maybe I just don't understand pellet grills. But my Camp Chef was way cheaper and doesn't fluctuate this much. And the glow plugs don't go out on me randomly. And the pellets don't get stuck when feeding them.

Not trying to offend anyone. Don't want anyone to take anything personally if you work for Weber or something. Just saying that with all the different Weber products I own, this is the only one that I don't love. I thought the convenience of it would weigh out favor of it, but I'm not sure. Actually now I'm debating getting a kamado with the shelf and ditching my performer, then keeping the smoke fire, just for convenience sake.
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That's strange as Smokeboost should be 200 or lower. Did you have your ambient probe near the Smokefire probe? What are you using for pellets? I know that PID controllers average out the temps so the display isn't constantly updated but I'm surprised to see it jump 100 over the set temp.
 
Jacob. I’ve had a number of pellet grills and can tell you that 90 percent of your graph looks great IF the average would have been close to the set point. What happened around 12:30 and 3:00 are big questions. Like Greg mentioned above, where was the ambient monitor probe? If it’s not within about a quarter inch of the SmokeFire RTD, it’s not reading the same thing the grill is reading to adjust the temps.

How was your cook setup? Drip pans? Pans can change the airflow of a pellet grill and create hot spots or block air from the grills RTD making the controller sense the grill is cooler than most of it really is. Airflow is key to a pellet grill. Did you happen to place food right next to the grill RTD? That can make it read cooler too.

Many pellet grills overshoot at start up and on big set temp changes. The first step is figuring out why the base reading is so far off expected. I’d say just offset based on your ambient, but not being able to run below 250° could get frustrating. I‘d start with an empty test with the ambient right next to the SmojeFire RTD. You also might through a SmokeFire meat/ambient in there too and see what all 3 say for a couple hours at maybe two different set points. I’d choose actual temps like 200° and 300° to start versus a smoke boost. That would give you a great starting point. If the ambient and meat probe both read the same different temp from the grill, then you can call Weber. Keep in mind the controller likely will not show every change in temp, but if it’s set to 200 and you’re averaging 250 something is awry like the probe or controller.
 
Thanks for the advice.

I was using Lumber Jack pellets and I had my ambient probe set up right in front of the Smokefire probe. I had a ham on the far right side. There should not have been any food in front of it.

And I agree. I'm cool with 210-265, averaging low 240s.....if I wasn't running on smoke boost. And I can tell you that I have run an ambient probe through the Smokefire and it is usually pretty far off from what the Smokefire is showing. I just forgot to save those cooks.

I don't know. I've got some free time this week. I might run a few empty tests with my different probes and see what I can come up with.
 
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