Grilla Grills Mammoth is Here (Initial cooks & insights as I go along)

[Jason TQ]

Good lookin food!

So the wood chunks go on top of the shield that sits on top of the fire pot?

Interesting

Ya. I only played around with it the 1st day but it wasn't for long. So I still need more testing on that. No opinions yet.

 

[Itsdone]

Ya. I only played around with it the 1st day but it wasn't for long. So I still need more testing on that. No opinions yet.

I see you have a PB aswell. You should try putting some chunks on top of the PB deflector. I imagine it would produce similar results. I'll have to get my PB out of storage and try it.

 

[SmokinAussie]

Cookin up a storm Jason. Pretty impressive unit!

 

[Jason TQ]

The pasta was really good. Smoked for about an 30mins and then I put it under the broiler of the oven to crisp up.

The low and slow meat were both around 150 around 7:30 this morning. They were in for close to 11hrs cooking at 205. Bumped the temp up to 225 and goal is to get them done and resting by 3'ish. Got them wrapped in pans. So the overnight cook was as success, seemed to hold rock steady.

 

[Big George's BBQ]

Very nice Jason. Hope it taste as good as it looks. How long do the pellets last for the long cooks

 

[Jason TQ]

Very nice Jason. Hope it taste as good as it looks. How long do the pellets last for the long cooks

Grilla has a video where they ran it at 250 on a full 40lb hopper and ran it until there weren't anymore pellets and it was like 50+something hours.

I did top mine off last night, but after 3 days running probably probably 18-20hrs the hopper had only dropped by a little more than 1/3rd, just eyeballing it.

 

[SweetHeatBBQnSC]

Looks like that cooker is putting out some top notch food.

 

[cholloway]

I gotta say Jason, the pic of the wood blocks burning yellow...
That's incomplete combustion and a lot of soot coming in contact with the food.
It looks like that fire could use more air. A lot more.
Having never used a pellet pooper, does the smoker have a damper that's not open enough?

Notice the difference between the spatchcock chick and the color of the thighs cooked
without the blocks.

 

[mike243]

Looks like it's working great, wood burning or shouldering are fine in any smoker I run, black smoke is what you want to look out for and is a grease fire or wet wood.

 

[Jason TQ]

I gotta say Jason, the pic of the wood blocks burning yellow...
That's incomplete combustion and a lot of soot coming in contact with the food.
It looks like that fire could use more air. A lot more.
Having never used a pellet pooper, does the smoker have a damper that's not open enough?

Notice the difference between the spatchcock chick and the color of the thighs cooked
without the blocks.

Yeah this is 100% worth noting. I did play around with wood again yesterday just to see how it would burn. That first cook where I used it (1st pic below) the cooker was at 400 to cook that chicken and did seem to put off some "sooty" type of color. It might be that those higher temps maybe aren't meant for the wood cuz they caught on fire fast since the fire pot was a blazin underneath that heat shield :becky:. There isn't any damper control.

Yesterday I was rolling 250-275 and got more of the normal smoldering. I didn't get a pic of it burning during the cook, but the 2nd pic below is post cook on what the wood looked like.

So my initial knee jerk thoughts after only trying wood twice is running super hot might not be the way it works well with wood. I did also note when the cooker was 225 the chunks weren't really catching/smoking at all. So size of chunk is another variable for when they start to burn at a specific temp. So maybe wood chips would work at the lower temps.

Too many darn variables for my brain to contemplate :laugh:. But I'll keep testing.

 

[Jason TQ]

Here's a few more shots of the food from yesterday. With friends and kids all over the place at dinner time I wish I would have gotten more :-D.

I'll probably keep posting in this thread over the coming weeks for posterity and maybe do a more formal bulleted "initial thoughts" thread that is more organized vs just random posts as I go along.

The one thing that needs plenty of testing is adding wood. Colin noted the bad combustion on that one wood pic and yesterday when I played with wood at lower temps it appeared to smoke fine. But clearly 2 is not a big sample size so I'm not giving any formal opinions on that until I do more cooks. Too many people give formal "reviews" after using something twice :shock:.

With that being said my "super formal/not formal/kind of formal/but not really formal pre-initial/post initial/ on the record, but kinda off the record thoughts" after cooking on it for 4 straight days are this..............

-Damn it just seems to work really really well (same reaction as when I got my chimp)
-It heats up fast, changes temps fast and recovers really fast after opening the door
-The app is great for controlling it/monitoring (not needed of course, but it has worked well for me so far)
-Temps seem relatively even from top to bottom
-The space is great, I've only used 2 racks, but the ability for cooking that volume of meat on 5 racks is nice to have
-So far the smoker flavor is similar to my other pellet cookers
-The casters are kinda small (knew that going into it), but they are on all the pellet smokers I've had. I upgraded my PB5 ones and might see about after market mods. From my garage to the driveway they are perfect fine. Might be tough to move through gravel, grass, etc.
-The Mammoth seems unfazed by the amount of N'sync & BTS music I have playing 24/7
-40lb hopper is great
-Keep in mind I haven't use the water pan with water in it, just a foiled over full aluminum pan (never used the PB5 water pan either). Not sure if/when I'll test water, but when using wood at higher temps the water would probably absorb heat better than that wood fire directly on the metal with no water above where some soot seemed to get created on that 1st cook

 

[4ever3]

Thanks for the formal nots much half assed review :laugh:


Looks like a great cooker and ample room for pans, cranks out some good looking food too!

 

[SweetHeatBBQnSC]

Thanks for the review that wasn't a review. It really seemed to clarify a lot but not much. I will continue to follow along for other reviews that aren't really reviews.

 

[mike243]

put a piece of aluminum foil over the wood pot very loosely and it wont burn it will smolder instead of flaming up

 

[cholloway]

Smoke from a smoldering fire can be as acrid as a fire that's starved for air.
I'm beginning to believe that a pellet smoker just isn't meant to burn wood chunks.

 

[SmokeOCD]

Will it smolder if you put the chunk on top of the diffuser? That's where I mostly see people putting wood, not in the firepot.
Also wanted to ask about the chicken in the foil pans. Do you cook them in the pans and finish them some other way? The butter in the before pics caught my eye and then the color in the finished product looked really good, but they're no longer in the foil pans so I'm thinking there's and additional step.

 

[cholloway]

Yesterday I was rolling 250-275 and got more of the normal smoldering. I didn't get a pic of it burning during the cook, but the 2nd pic below is post cook on what the wood looked like.

It looks like the blocks turned into lump charcoal, which indicates an oxygen starved environment.
Complete combustion, with enough air, the wood would be reduced to ash.

Back to my original thought... stick with pellets only. (jmho) :clap2:

 

[cholloway]

This "arm-chair quarterbacking" is easy!

 

[Jason TQ]

Will it smolder if you put the chunk on top of the diffuser? That's where I mostly see people putting wood, not in the firepot.
Also wanted to ask about the chicken in the foil pans. Do you cook them in the pans and finish them some other way? The butter in the before pics caught my eye and then the color in the finished product looked really good, but they're no longer in the foil pans so I'm thinking there's and additional step.

Ya they don't go into the fire pot. Only on the diffuser.

And I sauced the chicken as they came out of the pans and put back on the cooker for about 15mins.

 

[Jason TQ]

It looks like the blocks turned into lump charcoal, which indicates an oxygen starved environment.
Complete combustion, with enough air, the wood would be reduced to ash.

Back to my original thought... stick with pellets only. (jmho) :clap2:

Maybe. Only 2 cooks using the wood so not sure yet like I mentioned. The heat deflector seems to not want to burn larger chunks at lower temps and of course did ignite the hell out of them at 400 :laugh:.

I will say it reminds me of a gas smoker setup I used to have. Granted the pic below isn't the exact smoker I had a long time back, but essentially this is the setup for a lot of gassers. The wood isn't directly on "coals"/fire but on some type of heat plate/box that a flame underneath heats up and their isn't a ton of intake venting.

It gave solid color, smoke ring and flavor. Granted nothing like a charcoal smoker or stick burner of course.

This is kind of the same in terms of how that wood burns, with of course the benefit of the smoke/flavor from the pellets that is the primary source of the flavor. Luckily I didn't buy it for this for the wood option. It did intrigue me, but everything else has worked flawlessly and seems worth the price of admission.

I'm bummed I'll be away this weekend so might be another week before I get some longer runs playing around with the wood and the cooker in general.