Looked at the Green Mountain Grills today.

[mowin]

Glad CS got back to you.

First. Wrapping both trays together could make a difference, I've never tried it.

2nd. The holes in the tray are for high temp grilling and searing. Align the holes for more heat to get directly to your meat to get sear marks. It does work, but not great.

3rd... What difference can it have to place probe from the top or side? As long as it's in the center of the thickest part of the meat and not touching bone it should be ok.. but I rarely use the GMG probe.

 

[jcjack]

Same as mowin.  Wrapped foil on the grease trays.  Also on temperature, I noticed that with my Maverick 732 the grill is spot on at about 150F/165F.  Once the temperature goes higher (250F), the GMG-DB is about 25F to 50F high.  Worse as I go higher!  With the Maverick, I can adjust accordingly.  Haven't tried opening the grease trays to align the holes.  I had a feeling that it wouldn't sear as well as my Weber propane.  Nice to hear mowin's experience so I don't try and end up with a mess of grease below the trays.

I'm fine with that as I didn't buy the GMG-DB to grill - just to smoke.  Once the smokin' is done, I can do a sear on the Weber!  That's fair as I don't expect the Weber grill to smoke well either!  Since the two styles of cooking are so different, I can't expect each to do both types well.  Each has its own purposes and specialities.

 

[tikigriller]

Did filets tonight. Meat turned out perfect thanks to patience. Did 425 and it took almost 20 minutes to get to medium rare, so I definitely think you guys are right about it being low on the reading.

Do not recommend the GMG meat rub. Put it on the filets and it was not very good IMO, but again, the meat itself turned out really good and juicy. Seasoning....forever the challenge. Been using lowers seasoned salt and seasoned pepper for years, on about everything, so the other stuff is definitely a change.

 

[tikigriller]

I should change this thread title to the venture of a new pellet cooker all the way into some recipes until success so everyone new and learn from all of my mistakes and learning curves!!!!!!

Tonight, Chicken Wings. Simple but a big deal, as the chicken wing is a very popular dinner in this household of boys and a mom. Going for 400 until I feel they are done. Left side will be spicy, right side will be sweet.

image.jpeg

• tikigriller
• Aug 20, 2016

 

[tikigriller]

Wow. Just went in for the first flip, and we have a MAJOR difference in heat from left to right! Left side is significantly farther along than the right.

 

[tikigriller]

Wings turned out good. I think the smoker does not weaken the BBQ sauce as much as the charcoal did, so I ended up with slightly saucy wings, but every single one was eaten and tastey.

Spicey had a Webber chipotle rub with a sweet and spicy sauce, and the sweet had a basics poultry rub with a honey sweet sauce.

Took so much longer than expected. Really looking forward to the igrill2 showing up tomorrow to see the actual temps I am working with, as I really don't think the wings were ever actually cooked in a 425 temp which is where I was for the second half and the wings took an hour still. I don't mind waiting, but it just seemed long.

image.jpeg

• tikigriller
• Aug 20, 2016

 

[tikigriller]

Attempt number two at baby back ribs is coming along nicely. Been at 250 for 5 hours now. Spraying with apple juice and worschester sauce smoking on some premium apple,hickory, cherry, maple pellets.

image.jpeg

• tikigriller
• Aug 21, 2016

Getting ready to crank up the heat to 275 and start glazing with BBQ sauce. Based on the flex, should be done in about an hour I believe.

 

[tikigriller]

Soooo good

Ever so slightly too long on the ribs, but they were still very tastey.

image.jpeg

• tikigriller
• Aug 21, 2016

image.jpeg

• tikigriller
• Aug 21, 2016

image.jpeg

• tikigriller
• Aug 21, 2016

image.jpeg

• tikigriller
• Aug 21, 2016

 

[mowin]

Looks tasty. :drool

 

[jcjack]

Did ribs yesterday.  Had them at 180F for about an hour, then up to 230F.  I had trouble with temperature variation between the right and left side.  I've had it before, but this seemed way off.  I played with the heat shield and slide it a bit to the right.  Obviously not enough because towards the end of a six hour smoke, I had temps soaring to near 300F.  That's a 70F difference!  The ribs turned out okay but not fall off the bone.  Seems I did better with larger hunks of meat.  I did get a good smoke ring and a good smoke flavor.  I'll need to play around on the heat disperser location.

 

[jcjack]

With the GMG-DB cooled off, I took it apart to check the heat disperser.  When set in a centered position, the V-shaped underside diverts the majority of the heat the right - no wonder there was large temperature disparity!  I slid it to the right so that the center of the V was biased in that direction.  Smoking some chicken breasts tonight and will report back on temps.

 

[tikigriller]

I did burgers last night, and set it at 425.....ended up having to crank it up to 450.  Had a huge temp difference of 50 degrees from the igrill2 vs the temp reading on the GMG-DB (igrill2 much lower), but I was using a food probe for ambient temp, and not an ambient probe(which should come in the mail today), so we  will see tonight.  I moved the heat shield back to the center for this meal, but do not know about the different temps on each side, so I will play with that tonight when I have the right tools to measure while doing a flank steak marinated in teriyaki sauce.   (any recommendations on temps and time?)

At one point last night during the cook, my low pellet alarm went off when the hopper was full. Couldn't get it to turn off.  I stuck my hand in there and stirred them all around and it finally stopped.  Is this common?  Really starting to get a little frustrated with the quality......parts of me regretting not just ponying up the money for a Yoder...........not sure if I could still return it or not and upgrade, but upgrade would be pointless if the alarm is common in all grills and my fix is the standard fix.........

 

[mowin]

Alarm is a simple plug. If it stays on again even if you mix the pellets up, just unplug until a new on shows up.

I have my shield all the way to the right. The higher the temp, the more its off.
I aslo noticed when testing temps with nothing on the grill, i can get fairly even temps left to right. Add a chunk of meat, and there off again.

Food probes will be inaccurate as a ambient probe at higher temps. Most won't go much over 250*.

With all the quirks my DB has, it always puts out great que. I did two racks of SLR and two chickens Saturday. Barely had enough room, but everything came out great.

 

[jcjack]

Tikigriller - try not to get too discouraged.  Part of this is learning the grill - at least that's what I'm telling myself!  Across the grill, when I first started it, I was getting less than 12F from left, center, right sides of the grill.  I can live with that variation across the surface.  What bugs me, however, is the huge disparity between set temperature and actual. When set to 220F, I was getting 250F or better actual.  When set to 330F, I was getting 370+F and when set to 350F, I was getting 400F.  That's a 50F degree disparity!!

That all said, I did this through the course of smoking some boneless breast of chicken tonight and it despite the grill temps being off, they turned out surprisingly well.  I marinated them with a light coating of olive oil and a packet of Good Seasons Italian dressing (dry) overnight.  Then I hit them with smoke at 220F (really 250F) for a bit over an hour.  After that, for the last 45 minutes, I varied between 300F (actual temps 335F) to 350F (actual temps 400F).  I tried my best to keep the grill around 350F.  Pulled them when the internal temp of the chicken hit 160F.  All told, it was a 2 hour cook time.  Here's what they looked like coming off the grill:

IMG_0562.JPG

• jcjack
• Aug 23, 2016

After letting them rest for a few minutes off grill, I sliced into the one with the probe.  Plenty juicy inside and with a nice smoke ring and good smoke flavor.

IMG_0563.JPG

• jcjack
• Aug 23, 2016

The downside of this for me was the way the temps were so far off on the GMG-DB.  Then again, I'm telling myself that the food turned out well - had a nice smoke flavor to it and the boneless breasts stayed juicy.  I'm going to stick with it but just in case, I did report to GMG CS the problems in seeing a 25F variation at 220F and a 50F or more variation at the upper ranges!   Let's see what they say.

 

[tikigriller]

I started the process of asking about a return........more than anything I am just curious to see what they will say at this point.  I like the way the food is coming out, but at this point, two weeks old, and I have had a missing bolt in the leg, a new hopper fan, and now possibly a new plug for the pellet sensor.  That grill looks so simple, I feel like I have just about rebuilt the thing!  LOL

thus far, the gentleman that I spoke with about my issues last week, has not returned my email about return policies, and I reached out to the store I bought it from, and he was going to reach out to the rep who would handle these requests, and nothing from them either. Another true sign of CS is what do they do when someone asks the tough questions!  We shall see.

I bet I end up keeping it and continuing to learn on it.  I look forward to having a temp I can trust with the iGrill2 probes.

For a medium to slightly medium well flank steak, what temp would you take it off the grill?

 

[mowin]

140*

 

[jcjack]

What mowin' said.  If you like a bit more on the rare side of medium-rare, try 135.  You can always cook more, you can't cook less!

BTW - GMG CS got back to me.  Seems I'm running old software on my WiFi enabled version.  I updated to the latest version (prototype v6.4).  Going to try that.  Also, slightly embarrassing, I had the grease tray in backwards (half moon cut out on the right side, not left - doh!).  With these two changes, I'm going to do a test burn tomorrow to see how it behaves.  Maybe I'll throw on some burgers for fun too!  I'll report back results.

 

[tikigriller]

I give up....again.......we had a change of plans for dinner last night and the cook was complete disaster. Wife put together all the sides and produce in the house while I got the meat ready.  Kids had to have taco's, yet I couldn't keep the ground turkey and taco seasoning from falling in between the grates!  Ended up just making an absolute mess.  

Seriously.....going for Tri Tip tonight.....never made it to the Flank Steak last night...tacos really did win out.  Taco Tuesday!!!!  Just to be clear by the way, I was kidding about the taco meat.

 

[rogerwilco]

......... Just to be clear by the way, I was kidding about the taco meat.

So, I guess it really didn't fall between the grates? Good to hear: I solved the very same problem by using the extra-extra-course grind. Still haven't solved the seasoning swan-dive problem, though.....

 

[jcjack]

So I updated the software to v6.4 (prototype) from the stock v6.0.  My grill had been running as much as 50F hotter than set temperatures at the higher end (350F set - actual temps 400F mid grill).  So after checking with GMG-CS, I updated the software.  I had a choice of v6.3 (most up-to-date version) over v6.4, but decided to go whole hog on the prototype version.  GMG-DB CS told me that it hadn't been validated in cold weather temps so was still "prototype."  Since its 90's+ temperature in the Mid-Atlantic, I figured I didn't have to worry about cold weather operation - yet!  So ran a test burn this afternoon and here is what I got:

GMG-DB set temp: 350F

Actual temp:  330F

GMG-DB set temp: 250F

Actual temp: 245F

GMG-DB set temp: 150F

Actual temp: 145F

All actual temps were done with a Maverick Digital thermometer and I allowed the unit to run for a full 30 minutes at each setting to stabilize temps at the set point.  While the -20F disparity at higher temps was a bit disconcerting, it was better than 50F OVER!  I can always raise the set temp to compensate.  More importantly, I was encouraged by the mere 5F - 7F disparity for the lower temps where I believe the grill will spend most of its time.  So it looks like the new software is helping.  I have yet to do a real smoke with meat, but I figure I'll do that this weekend and report further.  Still liking my grill - just learning, updating, playing, etc.