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**Jordan S** · February 17, 2020, 09:53 AM

I'm really hoping that Weber listens to folks like glitchy, me and others who are having issues. I saved up money for a long time for a nice cooker, and now I've got a terrible pit in my stomach... I almost prefer to return this and just get a WSM or something. No technology, super simple, proven ability, 1/10 the price.

**Goldenbear** · February 17, 2020, 10:12 AM

Did a 5+ hour cook with some St. Louis cut ribs yesterday. Perfection. That stated, it’s not without concerns. While I didn’t experience the pellet cave issue, the fact that we have to concern ourselves with it is a huge problem. Living on the edge of a state park, I head out for extended hikes on the weekend. I was afraid to leave the SmokeFire unattended for more than an hour, so cut it short. The other concern will likely be fixed via firmware, and is similar to what others have posted, but to maintain a cooker temp of 225 I had to set the SF to 265. Again, the ribs were outstanding.

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**glitchy** · February 17, 2020, 10:24 AM

I just read on a FB group the cause of all the problems, the glow plug is from a Ford diesel. They probably built the grill from leftovers found in a Ford warehouse

**Old Glory** · February 17, 2020, 10:34 AM

Found On gRill Dead

**MattyBBq** · February 17, 2020, 09:32 PM

I think there are a lot of Smokefire buyers that are currently on the fence about returning the grill. This is a big purchase for me and I love how it cooks, but I am worried about the reliability of the grill. Sad that I am saying this about a Weber...

**glitchy** · February 21, 2020, 10:04 AM

I've been stressing over this all week going back and forth on this after the food the SmokeFire has turned out, but have finally decided that I am returning it this weekend. I do really like the grill, I'm very disappointed in the failure live up to the really high expectations Weber themselves set. I'm not all doom and gloom over the issues at all. I think it's a pretty decent grill. The smoke output to me seems amazing, especially at higher temps. The ability to grill burgers and bakes pizzas is implemented well. Pizzas were always mixed on other pellet grills (except the Memphis) due to being at the peak of their temp range and the recovery time when putting on, checking, turning etc. The SmokeFire turns them out like a pizza shop.

The pellet feed is the biggest issue for me followed very closely by the fire risk and the pain of cleaning. I believe I could mitigate these issues, but I don't feel that should be something the customer has to do on a $1000 product. If I wanted to put in that much effort, I'd buy a smoke daddy hopper and welder and build my own grill. I was going to buy food safe silicone spray, cell phone buzzers, and drip pans and call it good. Then my wife started questioning having to do those things and said you're going to be ****** off when there's a fire. In the end she has to put up with me if I put up with the grill, so it's going back.

**pkadare** · February 21, 2020, 10:48 AM

So, is it just me, or does it seem that the SmokeFire has been pulled from Amazon? I've used all kind of search terms for it on both the .com and .ca sites and can't find hide nor hair of it.

**BDCarp04** · February 21, 2020, 12:06 PM

glitchy totally respect your decision, especially after all of the time and effort you've put in to using the thing and not just going off of what was seen/read online. With that much money on the line you've gotta do what works for you.

Question for you - How was the ash/greasefire problem after you did your clean out? I'm still on the fence because I haven't played with mine enough to see the greasefire problem in person, but a close friend of mine is absolutely in love with his and claims there is next to no ash during the low and slows. I don't know what to believe, but I'll be smoking some butts this weekend for a few people and will be forming a better opinion over the next couple of days. Thought about just saying screw it and using drip pans to avoid the problem but I think I'm just going to do a quick and thorough clean out of the ash from the 600 degree cook first to see how it goes au natural.

After really thinking about this over the last week, is it possible that the initial ash dump from the burn in (along with barrel seasoning and the flaking off of the diffuser) are causing the early clogs and greasefire problems? Could we be looking at a situation where it can smoke, and it can sear, but you're going to want to clean up when switching high heat/ash to low and slow (and long) cooks?

The hopper problem is annoying, but I can work around that for the time being. The grease/ash problem is the one that worries me most, and I'm wondering if it's being made worse because Weber never mentioned to clean out after the first burn in or anytime after you run the thing on high for a significant amount of time.

**glitchy** · February 21, 2020, 01:15 PM

@BDCarp04 and pkadare dare I really feel like the ash is always going to be a problem. I have actually not had a fire personally, but screwed up the really good test of that by putting a water pan under my brisket. A 9x13 pan was about 1/3rd full of grease when I was done. I also totally cleaned the grill before starting the brisket cook. I will say there is ash everywhere and all the time. Somehow, I have not noticed it on the food. I will clean it up a bit before I return it tonight and shoot a couple pics of the inside for ya'll to judge from beforehand. It will be the remains of a 21.5 hour brisket cook alone.

A lot of it comes down to what Weber set for expectations and advertising...had they not bragged about things, maybe I'd be more accepting of what things are. They claimed that almost all of the ash went to the drawer. I'm seeing very little ash in the drawer and a lot in the chamber, on the front of the grill, on the hopper lid, essentially everywhere else. I also don't want to cook over drip pans in a pellet grill all the time. I did in this case for moisture, but thought about putting the brisket on the main shelf with one of the SmokeFire grease pans above or beside it. I just happened to have a 9/13 aluminum foil pan in the cupboard and was thinking until I know the hot spots on the SmokeFIre better, I'll shield the brisket from the direct heat. I wasn't even thinking about the grease. That's still and big unanswered question in my mind, how will this thing do low and slow on the main shelf food wise, are parts of briskets going to get dry from the more direct heat just right of the firepot? Pork butt seems a little more forgiving to that.

Then I woke up still frustrated about the flameout and started seeing the videos that day of the grease fires and have been struggling back and forth since. Though pkadare, I'm not sure how prevalent the differentials are once the grills settle in. At grilling temps, I tend to shuffle food around because all of my grills have that, even glowing charcoal beds sometimes have spots that are hotter than others in my experiences.

**Polarbear777** · February 21, 2020, 06:47 PM

If it wasn’t for these issues this thing would crush the competition.

but a pellet has to run unattended and run well. Flare up while searing is no big deal because you are there watching it. Unattended runaway fire will at the least ruin the food and at the worst ruin everything else.

**glitchy** · February 21, 2020, 11:38 PM

Even though Eddie and I split up and I’ve moved on to a new fling, I promised ya’ll some pics (@BDCarp04 and @pkadare). Here’s before cleaning.

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**glitchy** · February 21, 2020, 11:44 PM

Here’s after cleaning, I’ll let y’all decide if more ash was in the drawer or everywhere else. I’ll just say my lower back felt being hunched over that long scraping.

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**divisionbell77** · February 22, 2020, 03:10 PM

Weber is now uploading tips and tricks videos for the smokefire. They are now saying for low and slow have a drip pan directly below the grates under the meat.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Lxkhz_UZiU

**glitchy** · February 23, 2020, 10:12 AM

I realize that I have already mentioned this multiple times. I have zero concerns with how the SmokeFire cooked food. It turned out some of the best food I’ve made at all temperature ranges. Despite the ash everywhere, I never noticed any on my food.You can see a good indication of the with the pizza pics. I had another pellet grill that would turn a cheese pizza grey with ash and soot (needless to say I quit eating food from that grill and tried to fix it to no avail even with help from the company including a district manager visiting my house to help - but I digress).

The deciding factors for me were the pellet feed issues and the amount of work required to clean it.

**BDCarp04** · February 24, 2020, 09:35 AM

Didn't want to leave you hanging glitchy , thanks for the pics. You made me decide to use drip pans for this cook because I wanted to verify the level of ash afterward on my own before I started mixing ash and grease. And, I was cooking for other folks coming for dinner so I wanted the cook to go as smooth as possible.

Thought about writing a separate post, but figured most everyone is watching this thread so I'll just post a little bit here. Did two 7 lb pork butts and a batch of pork belly burnt ends (first try at them) yesterday. Went full drip pans under the grates and checked ash levels afterwards.

Addressing all of the major problems we've seen specifically:

PELLET HOPPER - Started the smoker at 3AM, and got the butts on around 4 with a hopper full of Weber grillmaster pellets. Went back to bed, but used my Thermoworks smoke probes along with the built in smokefire probes so I could keep an alarm running in case I started losing temp. By 10:15 (7+ hours) the temp was still rock solid on both the smoke probes and in the Weber app so I was pleased. I went out to check the hopper and the related pic is what I found (no shock, it's what everyone else is seeing). Though to be fair, pellets were still trickling down to the auger, and my auger stayed full. Would it have kept doing its thing the entire time had I just let it run? I don't know. However, since I had guests coming and I've heard the other stories of flameouts I didn't want to test it further this time around. I went ahead and balanced the hopper and let it run.

UNEVEN TEMPS - When the pork belly burnt ends were pulled off and put into a pan I definitely had pieces on both the extreme left and extreme right of the top grate that were overdone. Maybe the first column of pieces on each side. I figured I'd get some on the right, but the left surprised me. Everything else came out perfectly even. I had my ambient smoke probe on the grate near the Weber ambient probe and they very closely matched temps 90% of the time. It would vary slightly when the smokefire itself would kick on to keep the temp up. The smoke probe would shoot up 20-30 degrees higher than the Weber probe would be reading straight away, but then settled quickly and got back in sync.

ASH/GREASE - Gonna leave the last two pics for everyone to decide for themselves. First one is everything I caught on the drip pans during the cook (butts took roughly 15 hours in total, wrapped at 170, and pulled them off @ 200 right as guests were walking in the door plus all of the grease from the pork belly). Last pic is the ash leftover from the cook (the pit was cleaned out before I started so I had a baseline to measure against). I can say that if what I caught on the pans mixed with what ash was left in the bottom of the pit, I would have most certainly had problems and until the ash problem gets resolved, it's going to be an ongoing issue if you don't use a drip pan.

Final thoughts - First off, I've decided I'm keeping mine, and for a few reasons. I 1000% agree with glitchy that the smoke produced on this thing is amazing, and the food turned out to be some of the best I've ever made. I don't have other pellet experience to compare it to, but I'm very happy with what it cranked out. As far as the main problems mentioned above, I'm still waiting to see what, if any, fixes will come down the road. I'm too OCD to let my pit sit on it's own for longer than 7-8 hours at a time so if I can go that long without messing with pellets then I'll be OK. It's annoying, sure, but it probably affects me less than it does others. The uneven temps were only noticed at the far edges, and most of the time I won't be packed that full to the gills so I don't think it will be a long term issue for me - will definitely continue to monitor to see if that changes. And finally, the drip pans honestly were an unintended benefit because it made clean up a breeze. Should I have to cook that way? Hell no! But after seeing what cleanup trouble I saved myself by using them I probably would continue to do it this way just to save time and effort anyway. The design still needs to be addressed, but I'm happy using a pan going forward if it means I'm just getting rid of ash in the bottom at the end instead of scraping crud out for hours.

Long story short, I shouldn't have to work around these issues (Weber is NOT off the hook by any means!), but it's not going to be much of a problem for me to be able to. I'm OK with that.........for now.

*Notes* Final pic of food was taken AFTER eating, so the pork may look a little dried out compared to what it was when I first pulled it. That's my fault.

Also, no comment on the app as of now. Too simple in it's early stages to really do anything with it. That will get better over time, I'm sure.

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