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Man... my weekend got crazy in a hurry. The ending of that post pretty much sums up how I feel too.
Yes, and yes.
I work with a guy who's in laws spent 2 years cutting, selling and delivering mesquite off their property. At the end of the 2 years they had enough cash for an all-exclusive trip to Hawaii.
Yes, you do. IMHO the charcoal kicks the flavor up a notch. And, you can add wood if you care to.
There’s two companies that specialize in mods for the MB Gravity series smokers, Klotes and LSS. I’ve got stuff from both and recommend Klotes’ products over LSS.
The charcoal grate may be worth it unless MB has redesigned their grate; the grate spacing on my MB560 was such that good charcoal was dropping into the ash bin with a lot of burn left on it. If they’ve mod’d the grate, no worries. Yes they fixed this issue.
The firebox mod and the chute liner are must-do’s in my opinion. I also highly recommend a manifold cover. The manifold is affectionately referred to as the doghouse, but it’s thin sheet and designed as a consumable part. Runs about $40 for my grill and got replaced a couple times. This last time I chucked a manifold cover on it to help extend the life. Roger that. I'll look into both
I’ll smoke ribeyes at 225 until they hit 125 internal, then pull them and run the temp up to 650 to sear. No other product on the market gives that flexibility. Yes sir! It's a killer reverse sear grill.
Also, when you first light it, leave the top lid open and make sure the plunger switch is depressed for about a minute. This allows all the cold smoke to exit the chimney instead of building up as creosote on the chute. An easy and cheap lid protector is to throw a cut to size piece of heavy duty foil in between the lid and the chimney top. This too helps with creosote collection on the lid. Good tip. I'll start doing that.
Finally, some people like the rear vent slide; this allows you to control how fast smoke escapes thru the rear vent. I haven’t done it yet, but likely will next year. Yeah I'm still learning this thing. Likely get there myself too.
I don't have the rotisserie. Might be wise since we eat a lot of chicken.
I sear at 650 pretty often and have only killed the lid safety switch once. It didn’t kill the grill though; on the 560, if the the lid safety switch is dead, the controller limits the temp to 500*.
I don't think I bypassed the ash tray door yet. But my hopper switch and also the grill lid switch both bit the dust. Its not to hard to get to the wires to jump them but if I was putting a new one together I would not use any of the factory switches. I would probably just bypass them. I might add toggles but I am to lazy and I think I know better than to singe off my eyebrows opening the grill lid when its 700 degrees lol.
