My Experience with the EX6 after 1 week - This is a long one but I wanted to post as much detail of my experience for people out there who are worried or on the fence, so here it goes...
This is a summary of my experiences with the EX6 after owning it for a week. Let me start with the initial burn in.
For the initial firing and burn in I loaded the hopper with Weber competition blend pellets. The temp was around 34 with a slight breeze going left to right across the grill. It took 27 minutes to hit 600 but it did reach and maintain it.
Conclusion: Success.
After the initial firing was complete I set the grill temp to 400 and put 4 hamburgers on. I put the probes in and wanted to use the android app on my galaxy S8 phone to cook them. I looked for hamburgers under the red meat category but there are no hamburgers. Sure anybody can cook burgers without an app but I wanted to test all the capabilities of this system. Ok, no problem, I'll just use the "Target Temperature" feature where you pick a probe (up to 4 possible probes), set the temp on each probe and the system will alert you when the probes hit their target. But that does not work on the android. When you choose target temp, you then select a probe and it says proceed to setup, but when you do it never sets the probe temp and never starts monitoring it. Ok, fine. That doesn't work so I'll manually monitor the probe temps. Which is what I did. When it hit 155 degrees I pulled the burgers off, and they tasted good and were cooked right. I did want to see better grill marks though, so I vowed to cook at a higher temperature next time. It's a learning curve, no points against the grill for that.
Conclusion: Mixed Success. Hamburgers tasted good. App needs work. Too few recipes, recipies not sorted in a logical order, target temperature on probes does not work on android.
The next cook was for something I do quite often, and the reason we bought the larger EX6 - I cook 2 packs of hamburgers and 2 packs of chicken all at once. Prior to this grill I used my 2 burner Spirit 2 and sometimes a Kamado, and it would take me 2 hours to grill. Still using Weber competition blend, I fired up the EX6 to 450 this time, put the burgers on the bottom grate and the chicken on the top. I put a probe in one of the patties just to see what's going on, but that's only partially helpful due to the different heat regions on the grill. No probe on the chicken tenders since they are so small, I'll monitor them manually. Being a new grill, the cook was a bit chaotic as I tried to figure out what areas are hot and which are cool on the fly, moving pieces around to try to even out the cooking. What I noticed on my grill is that the left side under the first flavorizer bar is the hottest, and also the far left near the wall was hot. The right side was not quite as hot and the far right was the least hot. It could be related to the cold and a slight wind but I expect to have some differences in temperature and it does not bother me.
Conclusion: Success. The hamburgers cooked at 450 had good char marks, and with some shuffling around of food, the chicken was tender, some a bit more done than others but for me acceptable, and I was able to cook all in one setting.
The next cook was for some ribeyes I picked up at Sams. I wasn't going to grill that day because it was 25 degrees with a cold 15 mph wind, but it settled down a bit that evening and I really wanted to see if you can "sear". In this case I switched to my wife's iPhone 11 and used the app, and to shake things up further, I switched from Weber competition blend to "Smokehouse Blend" from Sams club - $15 for 40lbs. There were recipies for 1 1/2 in ribeyes for medium (me) and well done (sigh) for my wife. With 1 probe for each I set the grill for 450 and followed the steps in the app. I was a bit surprised when it had me flip them after 1 1/2 minutes but I flipped them and hit done after each step ( put probe in..done, flip...done, remove from grill...done). It will monitor each separately and obviously mine came off first and hers a bit later.
Conclusion: Success. The results were great. It cooked them perfectly, mine had the right amount of pink and hers just barely had some pink. Good sear marks, especially on hers. We both thought they were great. I think the smokehouse blend pellets are ok. I do think the weber pellets are better - a bit more smoke flavor and a bit sweeter, but overall I'd use either one.
The most recent cook today was a bit more eventful and almost had me thinking my grill was defective. here is what happened. Still using the smokehouse pellets, today I wanted to smoke some ribs, and at the same time make some not really jerky but sorta jerky. My plan was to smoke some 1/4 inch thin x 1 in wide sirloin tips at 200. Since I also wanted to do ribs I decided to up the temperature to 225, with the plan being to get some smoke on the beef and finish them in the dehydrator. So I started the grill, put the food on and all was stable and well until I decided to swing the grill 90 degrees to get the slight wind into the front of the grill instead of left to right. My though was that this would even out the temperatures. Prior to starting the grill I double checked the cord because I noticed it pulls out so easly, but when I gently swung the grill 90 degrees the damn cord still pulled part way out and I lost power. So I plugged it back in and it forced me to power down for safety. I did this, and when it completed I shut it down, turned it back on and set it back to 225. At this point the ambient temperature probe read 150. After I started it back up and waited a bit I noticed the temperature going down, not up. I figured now the wind has reversed directions and is blowing directly into the back vents affecting the reading so I swung it back 90 degrees to it's original position. No problem with the power this time but the temp still kept going down. So I decided to give it a little help and cranked up the temp to 600. Well, that got the temperature going up again so as it continued it's rise I reset the temperature down to 225 before it hit my target. Beep the monitor went off telling me that I had reached my temperature. All good I thought but noticed a lot of smoke coming off of the unit. I opened it up and it was blasting like a jet engine. It looked like it was trying to get back to 600 even though I dialed it down to 225. So I did a power down. After powering down I restarted, thinking I may have forgotten to hit the button after choosing 225. But no that's not possible. It beeped when I hit 225 and said I hit my temperature, plus I could see the probe temps so it was not on the select temp screen. On restart, I had the same issue - the temp was going down and not up even after waiting 15 minutes for it to get itself in order. So I did the same thing as before but this time only chose 425 to get the temp going back up. We'll that worked but again when it hit 225 I checked and the flames were buring like a jet. But this time I realized that the fan is not blowing. That means that the grill is not trying to force the temperature higher, I just have too many pellets dumped in the burner due to my bumping the temperature up way past my target to get it to heat up. So I opened the lid and closed it off and on to let the temperature stay down while the excess pellets burned off, and once they did the flames went down to normal and it has been working normal for the rest of this cook (which I am just finishing up as I type this). So it really wasn't the controllers fault that the flames were blasting because I had set the target much higher, but it was the controllers fault that I had to do that to force the temps to stop dropping and start moving up.
Conclusion: Success but some quirks with the controller I think need improving. The Bad - First, better recovery if you lose power. Second, make sure it brings the temperature back up when you restart and the heat at restart is somewhere above zero and below your target temp. This thing just let the temp drop and languish there forcing you to jack it up to much higher than your target just to get it moving upwards which causes it to dump too many pellets in leading to the appearance that it's trying to go past your set temperature. Better protection from pulling the cord out. Better protection of the vents from direct wind. The Good - On the plus side, I understand better how the grill works, and I did finish my cook and the ribs look pretty good. The beef is in the dehydrator but it looks good also. Continued on part 2
This is a summary of my experiences with the EX6 after owning it for a week. Let me start with the initial burn in.
For the initial firing and burn in I loaded the hopper with Weber competition blend pellets. The temp was around 34 with a slight breeze going left to right across the grill. It took 27 minutes to hit 600 but it did reach and maintain it.
Conclusion: Success.
After the initial firing was complete I set the grill temp to 400 and put 4 hamburgers on. I put the probes in and wanted to use the android app on my galaxy S8 phone to cook them. I looked for hamburgers under the red meat category but there are no hamburgers. Sure anybody can cook burgers without an app but I wanted to test all the capabilities of this system. Ok, no problem, I'll just use the "Target Temperature" feature where you pick a probe (up to 4 possible probes), set the temp on each probe and the system will alert you when the probes hit their target. But that does not work on the android. When you choose target temp, you then select a probe and it says proceed to setup, but when you do it never sets the probe temp and never starts monitoring it. Ok, fine. That doesn't work so I'll manually monitor the probe temps. Which is what I did. When it hit 155 degrees I pulled the burgers off, and they tasted good and were cooked right. I did want to see better grill marks though, so I vowed to cook at a higher temperature next time. It's a learning curve, no points against the grill for that.
Conclusion: Mixed Success. Hamburgers tasted good. App needs work. Too few recipes, recipies not sorted in a logical order, target temperature on probes does not work on android.
The next cook was for something I do quite often, and the reason we bought the larger EX6 - I cook 2 packs of hamburgers and 2 packs of chicken all at once. Prior to this grill I used my 2 burner Spirit 2 and sometimes a Kamado, and it would take me 2 hours to grill. Still using Weber competition blend, I fired up the EX6 to 450 this time, put the burgers on the bottom grate and the chicken on the top. I put a probe in one of the patties just to see what's going on, but that's only partially helpful due to the different heat regions on the grill. No probe on the chicken tenders since they are so small, I'll monitor them manually. Being a new grill, the cook was a bit chaotic as I tried to figure out what areas are hot and which are cool on the fly, moving pieces around to try to even out the cooking. What I noticed on my grill is that the left side under the first flavorizer bar is the hottest, and also the far left near the wall was hot. The right side was not quite as hot and the far right was the least hot. It could be related to the cold and a slight wind but I expect to have some differences in temperature and it does not bother me.
Conclusion: Success. The hamburgers cooked at 450 had good char marks, and with some shuffling around of food, the chicken was tender, some a bit more done than others but for me acceptable, and I was able to cook all in one setting.
The next cook was for some ribeyes I picked up at Sams. I wasn't going to grill that day because it was 25 degrees with a cold 15 mph wind, but it settled down a bit that evening and I really wanted to see if you can "sear". In this case I switched to my wife's iPhone 11 and used the app, and to shake things up further, I switched from Weber competition blend to "Smokehouse Blend" from Sams club - $15 for 40lbs. There were recipies for 1 1/2 in ribeyes for medium (me) and well done (sigh) for my wife. With 1 probe for each I set the grill for 450 and followed the steps in the app. I was a bit surprised when it had me flip them after 1 1/2 minutes but I flipped them and hit done after each step ( put probe in..done, flip...done, remove from grill...done). It will monitor each separately and obviously mine came off first and hers a bit later.
Conclusion: Success. The results were great. It cooked them perfectly, mine had the right amount of pink and hers just barely had some pink. Good sear marks, especially on hers. We both thought they were great. I think the smokehouse blend pellets are ok. I do think the weber pellets are better - a bit more smoke flavor and a bit sweeter, but overall I'd use either one.
The most recent cook today was a bit more eventful and almost had me thinking my grill was defective. here is what happened. Still using the smokehouse pellets, today I wanted to smoke some ribs, and at the same time make some not really jerky but sorta jerky. My plan was to smoke some 1/4 inch thin x 1 in wide sirloin tips at 200. Since I also wanted to do ribs I decided to up the temperature to 225, with the plan being to get some smoke on the beef and finish them in the dehydrator. So I started the grill, put the food on and all was stable and well until I decided to swing the grill 90 degrees to get the slight wind into the front of the grill instead of left to right. My though was that this would even out the temperatures. Prior to starting the grill I double checked the cord because I noticed it pulls out so easly, but when I gently swung the grill 90 degrees the damn cord still pulled part way out and I lost power. So I plugged it back in and it forced me to power down for safety. I did this, and when it completed I shut it down, turned it back on and set it back to 225. At this point the ambient temperature probe read 150. After I started it back up and waited a bit I noticed the temperature going down, not up. I figured now the wind has reversed directions and is blowing directly into the back vents affecting the reading so I swung it back 90 degrees to it's original position. No problem with the power this time but the temp still kept going down. So I decided to give it a little help and cranked up the temp to 600. Well, that got the temperature going up again so as it continued it's rise I reset the temperature down to 225 before it hit my target. Beep the monitor went off telling me that I had reached my temperature. All good I thought but noticed a lot of smoke coming off of the unit. I opened it up and it was blasting like a jet engine. It looked like it was trying to get back to 600 even though I dialed it down to 225. So I did a power down. After powering down I restarted, thinking I may have forgotten to hit the button after choosing 225. But no that's not possible. It beeped when I hit 225 and said I hit my temperature, plus I could see the probe temps so it was not on the select temp screen. On restart, I had the same issue - the temp was going down and not up even after waiting 15 minutes for it to get itself in order. So I did the same thing as before but this time only chose 425 to get the temp going back up. We'll that worked but again when it hit 225 I checked and the flames were buring like a jet. But this time I realized that the fan is not blowing. That means that the grill is not trying to force the temperature higher, I just have too many pellets dumped in the burner due to my bumping the temperature up way past my target to get it to heat up. So I opened the lid and closed it off and on to let the temperature stay down while the excess pellets burned off, and once they did the flames went down to normal and it has been working normal for the rest of this cook (which I am just finishing up as I type this). So it really wasn't the controllers fault that the flames were blasting because I had set the target much higher, but it was the controllers fault that I had to do that to force the temps to stop dropping and start moving up.
Conclusion: Success but some quirks with the controller I think need improving. The Bad - First, better recovery if you lose power. Second, make sure it brings the temperature back up when you restart and the heat at restart is somewhere above zero and below your target temp. This thing just let the temp drop and languish there forcing you to jack it up to much higher than your target just to get it moving upwards which causes it to dump too many pellets in leading to the appearance that it's trying to go past your set temperature. Better protection from pulling the cord out. Better protection of the vents from direct wind. The Good - On the plus side, I understand better how the grill works, and I did finish my cook and the ribs look pretty good. The beef is in the dehydrator but it looks good also. Continued on part 2
