Masterbuilt MB20041020 Gravity Series 560 Outdoor Digital Charcoal Barbecue Griddle + Grill + Smoker, Portable, Built-in Thermometer Gauge in Black

Product Information

Unlike with many conventional charcoal smokers or charcoal grills, adding more charcoal in the middle of a cook is easy if you’re running low. Just open the hopper and pour some in. Heat and smoke waft into the cooking chamber through a side vent, and it’s channeled through a metal box with outlet holes punched into both sides along its length. (Masterbuilt calls it a “heat manifold assembly.”) It’s a bit like an offset smoker in this aspect. For example, if you set a temperature for the meat probe once it reaches that temperature, the alarm goes off as you would expect.

Light the charcoal from underneath with a Firestarter via a side door. Let the fire starter take for a few minutes. It’s hard to think of a way that this gravity charcoal grill smoker could be easier to use. To set the temperature, just dial in the temp that you want on the digital temperature control and wait between 7-13 minutes. It takes 7 minutes to get to a consistent 225° and 13 minutes to achieve a roaring 700°. Side Shelf:And that’s it. The whole process, from opening a bag of charcoal, to reaching our set temperature, took about 15 minutes. If you dismissed using charcoal in the past for the hassle and cleanup it demands, the speed and ease of starting the 560 make it worth reconsidering. Grilling and Smoking 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? Using the Signals to detect temperature variation at different points on the grill Probes placed to measure middle and left and right sides of the grill The hopper can hold enough charcoal for 12-15 hours of cooking depending on temperature and conditions.

These innovative grills deliver exceptional performance, convenience, and versatility for all your outdoor cooking adventures. After almost finishing the build, I found that the guides for the air intake slides were out of alignment or that the slides would simply not go in. To fix this, I had to slightly disassemble things, do some minor filing, and re-assemble. A pain, to be sure! DIGITALFAN CONTROL With the push of a button, the digitally controlled fan moves air flow from the hopper to the cooking chamber and maintains desired cooking temperature. One very minor inconvenience is that the lid to the hopper opens toward the grill, so if the grill lid is up, the hopper lid cannot fully open. I’m not sure there’s necessarily a scenario where one would need to have both open at the same time, but it does seem slightly odd that it was designed this way. Masterbuilt 560 Price:Since this barbecue uses indirect heat as opposed to a normal kettle grill that has the coals directly beneath the grill grate, I wasn’t sure how well it would reverse sear a steak. Starting at around 120˚C, I slapped on a farm shop sirloin and left it on for around 30 minutes then let it rest while I raised the Masterbuilt’s temperature to 350˚C – it didn't take long. As soon as the meat hit the grate, it sizzled like a sizzling thing. Fat juicesthen started dripping on to the scorchingly hot manifold below which in turn produced a flame, and it’s this combination of high heat with an occasional flame that makes searing such a cinch on this grill. Needless to say, the surface of the steak sported great sear marks and superb caramelisation while the centre remained a succulent medium rare. This charcoal grill smoker is designed to smoke low and slow, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg. With a cooking temperature as high as 700°, it can easily grill and sear. Make sure the ash bin door and hopper lid are closed and latched. They have kill switches on them, so if opened, the fan stops. This is a safety feature and helps prevent temperatures from running away. They draft excellent, meaning you get lots of clean air and smoker over your food; this will help build an excellent bark and smoke ring for these super long cooks, brisket, lamb shoulder, pulled pork etc.

Control temperature and cook time with the digital control panel or with smart device control using WIFI or Bluetooth My experience seems to be shared by others. The Masterbuilt app has a rating of 1.8/5 on Google Play and 1.7/5 on the App Store. Ease of Cleaning The Masterbuilt Gravity Series 560 Digital Charcoal Grill and Smoker helps redefine charcoal cooking creating the ability to smoke, grill, sear, bake, and roast with it's innovative GravityFed™ charcoal hopper holding over 12 hours of lumpwood charcoal or briquettes with it's gravity feed ensuring the constant addition of fuel to the fire. There is no need to remove any charcoal after each use.

First and foremost, this cooker is meant for people who love to smoke (or plan to smoke) large quantities of meat and love the more complex taste of charcoal and wood smoke, as opposed to the cleaner and milder taste of smoking with wood pellet, gas or electric smokers.

Installing, setting up the app, and connecting to the grill is simple enough, with on-screen prompts and easy-to-follow instructions from the manual. No complaints here at all. There’s a removable drip pan under the cooker, but the access is from the side, below the side shelf. It’s not easy to get to without doing squats, and I can’t help but wonder why it’s not accessible from the rear. There are 3 Gravity Series models in the collection: the560, the 800 and the 1050.The 560 is, to a degree the no-frills (or less frills) model in the series, designed to be more accessible budget wise. The 800 and the 1050 models offer more space, more comfort features, and of course, come at a higher price. Whats the difference between the Masterbuilt Gravity Series grills?

There is a notable difference in the cooking area of the three grills, both in terms of the main cooking grill size and the total cooking/warming area. This, for many, is one of the main variances to consider when choosing which model is right for them.