If you do this, make sure there is not too much small grit at the bottom of the hopper. This obstructs the airflow, so the temperature will not rise fast enough, and you will get an E4 error message. If you do not see or hear this message, you will probably notice a lot of smoke. This Masterbuilt Gravity Feed charcoal smoker measures 52″ tall, 54″ wide, and 24 1/2″ deep. The unit weighs just a hair under 147lbs. Cooking Space: Instead of a hopper full of pellets, you add lump or briquette charcoal. You still need to add a fire-starter, but then the fan controls the burn rate and manages the temperature of the grill. We hear that a lot of people find the functions of the app somewhat limited. We like it. You can only set the temperature or time, and the app indicates whether this temperature has been reached. If you want more, you can set timers. There is also a recipe book with hundreds of recipes. A nice addition would be to add your own recipes. Maintenance of the Masterbuilt 560

The middle level is approximately 12 inches deep, while the top level measures around 8 inches deep. Food Capacity: So before you start your next barbecue session, shake the grid at the bottom of the column so that it falls into the ash pan. It sometimes helps if you poke it from underneath with a short screwdriver.And of course, what’s a smoker test from AmazingRibs.com without ribs? Here are the results of a 6-hour low & slow BBQ rib cook following our Last Meal Ribs recipe. Once again, a successful cook and a very happy mouth. You have a digital control panel that lets you set your exact temperature between 225 – 700°F. The control panel connects to an app for remote control. The digital control panel includes room for up to four meat probes. In case of any other errors, the display panel will also read “Err” followed by a number 1 – 5 for various errors, such as failure to ignite charcoal. The manual lists a handy chart to troubleshoot any error messages. Here at The Barbecue Lab, we review gear just like this to help keep you from investing in bad bbq gear that won’t get the job done for you. With the Masterbuilt, you can smoke in 2 ways. The easiest method is to throw a chunk of smoke wood into the ashtray, where the glowing embers fall from the hopper. These embers hit the smoking wood and cause the wood to smoulder and smoke without burning. The smoke dissipates a bit on the way to the kettle, so you get a lighter smoke.

The one aggravation that I had with this cooker is the hopper base tray, the tray that holds up all the charcoal. Assembling the gravity series 560 will take between 1 1/2 hours to 2 1/2 hours. We wouldn’t call this assembly process easy, but as long as you have a bit of patience, everything goes together quite nicely. Ease of Use: It’s this kind of connectivity that we crave in this new breed of grills. Having the ability to control our cook from a smart device while we’re watching the game or even away from the house is incredibly convenient. It’s almost taking the challenge out of producing mouth watering barbecue, but is that a bad thing? The vertical charcoal hopper is designed to hold over 12 hours of briquettes. The hopper will hold about 10lbs of lump, give or take the size of the lump charcoal that you’re using. Since an all-over sear means more flavor than the stripes of grill marks, I rotated the steak about every 15 seconds, and flipped it over every minute to a new hot section of the grate until there was a nice even brown flavorful crust and the internal temperature was 132°F, about medium-rare. The flavor was outstanding with just a hint of wood smoke from the single wood chunk.You could also just as easily wad up some newspaper and push it into the opening to fire things up, but we find that if newspaper is the way you’re planning to go, drizzle a bit of vegetable oil on there first to make sure the coal catches fire before the newspaper goes out. The Charcoal Hoppper Easy Cleanup: The Gravity Series 560 features a removable porcelain-coated ashtray and a grease management system, making cleanup a breeze. Spend less time cleaning and more time enjoying delicious BBQ. The Gravity Series performed well in both low & slow smoking and hot & fast grilling tests. Reverse searing a 1 inch ribeye went very well. I first cooked the steak slowly with Kingsford Original briquets and 1 small wood chunk in the hopper at a cook temp of 225°F until the internal meat temp registered 115°F. Then I removed the steak from the grill to prevent overcooking while I cranked the Gravity Series up to 700°F on the control panel. Once the display read 700, I put the steak on the “sear” side of the grate. It smoked and sizzled instantly, and my mouth started watering. After 1 minute, I flipped the steak and saw grill marks galore! Redefine charcoal cooking with the GravityFed™ Hopper that holds 12+ hours of fuel using lump or briquette charcoal. No need to remove charcoal after each use! When the hopper lid or door are open embedded safety features immediately stop the fan plus the lid switch monitors the grill to maintain the correct cooking temperature they are open.