The biggest difference in most of these is:

Thickness of the steel
Size of the unit
Ease of cleaning
PID controller
Alternate uses (use as grill, side-sear, rotisserie, etc.

Some of these differences can be mitigated, though.

Did some amazing burgers on the RT tonight. Via the all, got her all preheated and ready to rock. Went out, out on patties, plugged in temp probe, went inside and app told me when it was done. Easy.

I had a Green Mountain Grill until yesterday. Over the years I added a second cooking surface, front shelf and wifi. All the parts are user serviceable using videos provided by them, on YouTube. The only thing you need to make sure of is that the burn pot is empty of ash and it'll keep running nicely.

I wanted more space, though, so I switched out for a Louisiana Grills LG900 with the extra box on the side. It's thinner material, so it wont' hold heat as well, but that's why I throw a welding blanket over, anyway. The next trick is figuring out how to throw a welding blanket over this one, since it doesn't have a traditional chimney. I'll figure that out today, since I'm firing it up for the first time for dinner tonight.

Congrats!

You may not need your blanky...

LG has a unique exhaust system and are widely known for their heat retention, so....

How'd the first firing go?

Always a learning curve on the first few cooks.

Costco had these in store & online for awhile....

I scored a Cabelas-Pro-Series 24-Elliptical-Pellet-Grill in the bargain cave a couple weeks ago. Works great! I have slow smoke ribs and chicken on it and food tastes great.

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Well, the thing seems to be made of thinner metal than the GMG, from what I remember, although it might be the same. The hopper is definitely smaller, and there's no low-pellet alarm, which lead to me finding out that it was 105 degrees, not 370 while trying to cook chicken for dinner last night. Also, the smoke box on the side *never* got to any decent temperature - when the main barrel's at 450 for an hour, I'd expect the smoke box on the side to get to more than 150. Given basically any situation, I'm going to add insulation to drop the amount of fuel needed, just for efficiency.



Yep. I've sent a few questions to their tech support, to be sure I'm doing things right.



I got mine last week at Costco. 900 online, 750 in person. They'll help you load it into a truck... but I had to open the obxes and remove it piecemeal by myself.

I'm also fairly certain that I have wheels on the wrong way around, but they do match the manual :(

Not getting to 150 is a GOOOD THING. I am pretty sure the side box is designed to be a cold smoker on that rig. Lots of people would love to have a pellet burning cold smoker. See if you can get a good read on what the temp in there is when you set the smoker to minimum. If it is <100* that means you can smoke things like cheese that have a low melting temp.

If you do not already have one, pick yourself up a wireless thermometer. There are a bunch of different ones out there. Maverick, Tappecue, Fireboard. prices range from $30-300. These will all let you monitor your smoker and meat temp. They also have alarms so you can get notified if your smoker goes out or the temp drops for any reason.

Yes, lamrith is correct, that should be your cold smoker

Start here:

http://www.bbq-brethren.com/forum/showt ... p?t=246335

Two places to do searches on with good info:

http://www.bbq-brethren.com/forum/


https://www.smokingmeatforums.com/

And that goes for everybody, whatever you have, great info at those sites.

If you don't want to sign up, just google your rig, or your problem, and 1 or both of those sites should show up in the first few pages.

I did expect it to be a cold smoker, but I also expected that it would be able to get to 225 while the main barrel section was at 350, given that it's an open vent to the thing. I'm surprised that it doesn't get anywhere near that. Likewise, I was expecting it to get to a consistent temperature, rather than a gradient.

EDIT: Got a response from support - definitely only a cold smoker on the side. That's a touch disappointing, but whatever. I just change how I use it.

I read the thread linked - it was actually for the larger version than I have, which has better, shorter dampers compared to what I have, so I'm looking at 200 degree drops from main chamber to cold smoke box, at the top, and 300 drop down to the bottom of the box. I'm going to wrap stuff around areas to make it ... less bad.

I do also have temperature probes, but I might be getting myself a Fireboard ;)

Urgh. Temperature overshoot. Maintaining 410 instead of 350. Brisket's ready a bit early. We'll see how much fat is rendered off. It's now sat, wrapped in a cooler to hold until serving.

I'll post pictures later in the cooking thread, because I've been busy.

Can you modify the feed rate? On the RT you can change fine tune the auger feed rate.

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Yep, there's a few variables that you can speak to support about, to modify the initial temperature it gets up to, and a couple of other things.