Pretty much as expected so far. Not as solid as Weber, Traeger, etc. However, quality does seem up significantly from the SmokePro STX. Assembly was more work than most, but not terrible. I’m very happy in made it with all parts and no damage since shipped. Burn in running now.
Alright, flat drip pan modified to fit (a little trimming required on one end for slide and grill rails), ribs cooking, and probes checked. The probes lined up with Thermopop perfectly in ice and boiling water. Might do meatloaf tonight.
Ribs went 1 hour on high smoke, riding out the rest of the cook at 260 with smoke setting 7. I love my fireboard, but it’s nice just to grab one probe and go on shorter cooks. I’ll still use FB on overnights and with the WSCG.
I also snuck in a couple reverse seared filet mignons and one tilapia filet yesterday, but didn’t snag pics as time was crunched between activities. Turned out good. I wasn’t blown away by the sear box, but waiting to see how it performs with grill grates in a couple days.
For the flat drip pan, I bought the drip pan for their other pellet grills (non SG/Woodwind). I used the Woodwind drip tray to mark the drain end and cut it with a jig saw equipped with a metal cutting blade and filed off rough edges. It's awkward to hold and mark, but you can put the two pans together drip edge to drip edge and use a sharpie. Basically, you are chopping of metal for the slide and grill rails.
Had wibs for lunch, could taste smoke, so off to a much better start than the Traeger last week. Wife kept saying these wibs are soooo much better than the last ones. Smoke wasn’t overly strong (but adequate for us), but I will definitely try level 10 sometime.
The app for CampChef’s WiFi is pretty decent. It’s a very simple and intuitive interface that doesn’t require a lot of extra clicks and screen jumps. It alerts you when startup is done, set temp is reached, and really importantly when the temp drops really quickly potentially indicating a flameout early. It alerted me a couple times spritzing and rearranging ribs, which seemed fair since I had the lid open for 2-3 minutes probably. I do think this guy will stick around a while.
So far food is a notch below the Weber in smokiness, but still very passable. There seems to be less ash accumulation than the Weber, and no grease mixed in it. The Slide N Grill actually makes clean up easier, since you vacuum around heat shield, then just slide it over and vacuum under where it was. With the fire pot dump, they recommend cleaning gevery 50 hours. On the SmokePro STX, I usually went every 40 lbs of pellets or after a cook that I needed to replace the drip tray foil if that was sooner.
I did some temp testing Friday night and left side is about 10 degrees hotter which is pretty acceptable, IMO. I switched smoke levels a few times too, and didn’t see much change in range, but in how often it bounced up and down.
After the cooks today, I’m thinking about asking Drew to stick around a while. I’m pretty happy with this one. Every cooker has its quirks but there seems to be a lot to love about the Woodwind Today the WiFi wasn’t working when I cooked dinner because our router needed restarted. I had noticed a bypass option on startup so I gambled and turned the grill off and back on, set temp, hit bypass and barely missed a beat and WiFi reconnected.
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