Deal on Grilla's

[Bogy]

STEbbq I think the last time they dropped the prices on their smokers was when they came out with the alpha controllers. They don't so much have sales as they have clearance prices. Which can be a good deal if you don't insist on having the very latest edition. I was fine with getting my US made smoker that had been used 12 times for $300 less than the Chinese version cost.

[STEbbq]

This makes more sense to me than steel pricing or breaking their rule of not doing sales. I wouldn’t be surprised if they had a ton of Grillas and old controllers but none of the new with no prospects of getting more new ones until say 2022.

[Bogy]

I'm no on the lake, I'm a whole mile away.

[Dan Deter]

I still need the other house, too. Preferably on a lake...

[Bogy]

Me too! After buying a griddle earlier this year. But I really NEED one at the other house!

[jfmorris]

In the same boat here! And I just can't justify another cooker now with the empty nest.

[STEbbq]

Agreed. Grilla has added some good features to improve them over MB and make it worth using. Love the pause idea.

[BigCountryQ]

The meat probe is actually quite a nice probe. It's the same probe that most other companies buy for their thermometers.
The pause feature is probably the best feature of all of it.
I di beta testing for the WiFi controller, so I've seen it in it's infancy. It is quite a nice controller and a pretty dang good app as well. It's also pretty cool that you can control the feed rates right from the app as well as offsets for both the food probe and RTD probe. The defaults are usually good for most people, but extreme weather can sure wreak havoc.

The introductory price for the WiFi earlier this year was $129. They intend to sell them for $199 once they can catch up.

I've been cooking my butts/briskets at a lower temp for 8ish hours for the last couple of years (180-190), then I bump it up to 250-275 to finish it off for another 4-8 hours (until probe tender of course). I have thoroughly enjoyed waking up to my alarm after that first 8 hours, rolling over and turning up the temp of the grill and falling asleep all in less than 1 minute.

[STEbbq]

Yeah, I have not used the WiFi for a while on the MB. No real need with the temp monitoring handled by the Inkbird and the running a single temp for the full cook most times. Since I use lump, start up times are super fast so not much of a need to monitor start-up temps so I know when to toss the meat on. It is also summer so I don’t really care about being outside but that will probably change in the winter.

[Dan Deter]

Same boat.

[RickyBobby]

I would absolutely love to add a grilla to my stable, but even with the discount, I still can’t afford it right now. Curse you responsibilities! Thanks for posting though!

[Bogy]

Personally, while I find the wifi nice on my Blaz'n to change the temp, last month when I had a brisket and butt on the OG and I was 3 hours away in St. Paul, I had my son in law there to watch it for me and if I felt it needed adjusting, he did it just fine. Kinda like back in the day when the TV remote was the youngest child who could read the numbers on the dial. I'd take a non-alpha one if they had that available.

[jfmorris]

I'll add that if I were in the market for a pellet smoker, I would jump on the OG back at the lower price. I'm not as hooked on everything in my life being wifi connected these days to where that is a huge factor to me.

[jfmorris]

Given the issues in sourcing electronic parts, my guess on this sale of the non-Wifi versions that had disappeared is that is an attempt to sale using controllers they already had in inventory but had stopped selling, due to a shortage of the newer controllers.

I'm in the business of designing and building circuit boards and computer based products in the retail Point-of-sale industry, and right now, lead times on many chips is up to 40 weeks, 52 weeks, or even longer, from time of order to delivery. My CM (contract manufacturer) is STILL trying to source 10 different chips in one of my products. I turned in the PO to order a run of boards in February, with delivery to me to be in May, based on then current lead times. They ordered all the parts in February. We are STILL waiting on 10 different parts, and have resorted to paying extortion to chip brokers in Asia to get some of them.. By extortion, I mean, some broker has some chips that fell off a truck or came from some other companies excess inventory, but they want to charge $33 per part, versus the going rate of $2.50 per part. They can get away with it because Texas Instruments, Intel, whoever, can't tell me when they will deliver the parts that I ordered in February, and which have been delayed over and over since May.

[Bogy]

STEbbq it's hard to know just what goes into shortages and pricing these days. Even shipping and trucking are a problem. Grills could be sitting on a dock somewhere, but there are no truck drivers to bring them to where they need to go.