Should You Buy The Weber SearWood? Three Weeks in... Cleaning and comparing...

This is the kind of honest and real review I needed thank you!

Hey Sambo - your videos were some of the first out on the Internet. Your comments about the Weber customer service were part of what drove me to the pit. I reached out to Customer Service prior to purchase and explained my use case. 3-5 cooks per week. Tritip, ribs, etc. They wrote back in 24 hours and said it would handle it but to probably use the plastic spatula to clean it out once per week. I've been doing that in the humid Florida weather and it seems to do a better job of getting grease where it needs to if the dust isn't building up on the walls. Thanks for your videos.

Love your honest review of this pellet grill. Im going to get one now.

Your candor is appreciated. It seems to me that so many of the issues that pellet smokers have could be solved if they made an OFFSET pellet smoker. High heat grilling could happen over the offset portion and little or no ash would reach the cooking chamber. Also, hotspots would be eliminated along with grease fires. This would allow grease management to be, well, manageable.

Thanks for the videos - 40 hrs was a pretty extreme test, I think it's pretty easy to clean every other cook. By the way tested mine in an unexpected down pour today and it worked flawlessly.

Awesome video Sambo! Your videos are really getting me interested in the searwood. I stayed away from the smokefire because of all the issues that were coming out of it but the searwood looks like it could be a strong contender.

These are the every day joe reviews we need, ya know the common man w/ common sense 👏

If you read the manual, they reccomend cleaning every 10 to 15hrs. I did my first smoke for 8hrs,all grease in the foil pan and ash in the black tray. Weber also includes a black plastic spudger for easily cleaning out the ash or any buildup in the main cavity. Cable management? What cables do you need to manage? Theres a power cable.... And the probe... I hope you aren't outting the power cable on the back rack holder. That's a great way to melt it. Love this compared to the Traeger. Also can use a spirit insert to use all the crafted Genesis attachments. Agree, the utensil knobs are useless.

Sambo, appreciate all the time and effort you’ve put in to these videos. I picked up mine last week. Million dollar question…. Would you buy it again?

Thank you for the honesty. I'd wondered about placing the grease collector so near the heat source. I prefer the side bucket just because I worry about grease igniting. I tend to clean my pellet smoker more often than most folks. Always after a long smoke and at least every third time after shorter smokes so this issue wouldn't necessarily be a problem in my case but still ....

Thanks for taking the time to post this. I am looking at the Searwood or the RecTeq

If I had one and I am looking. I would probably try using the top rack when I could and use a disposable drip pan below. Not do able for searing I know. But I am disappointed to see it only has two wheels. I need to keep mine in a garage and roll it out about 75 feet to use it.

My concern would be the continuing ability to easily remove those wing nuts over time.

The grill comes with a plastic scraper to push the ash and grease from the drip pan to the aluminum foil grease cup. I would presume if scraped every other cook, it would be easy to keep clean and little need for a paint brush.

Great video! Your manual mode video helped a LOT. I wonder if the 600 offers better grease management. I did about 8 cooks with a few long cooks and found that almost all the grease made it to the grease tray. The far right back corner has a little bit of grease but not enough to worry me. I just came from the Smokefire which had a ton of issues so maybe I’m desensitized. All in all great improvement.

Nice review but I feel like you are trying to solve for a nonexistent problem. Yes, lots of ash in the diffuser, but did the grill stop or degrade in performance? The grease does not make it down to the foil pan? Again, was there a problem? I know you are using your extensive experience, but again, what problem are you trying to solve? I don’t have issues with the tool hooks but I can imagine some do. That definitely could have been better. I’ll keep tuning in as you have useful reviews. Grill on!

You ever consider that the reason that the grease pools in that corner and doesn't go into pan is because your grill isn't level or should be tilted a tad in that direction? Just a thought.

First off, great video! It’s one thing to show us how it cooks, but to show us what it’s like to live with from an upkeep perspective is very useful, and you’re the only person that has shown us that as far as I know. When I saw all the ash I was a bit taken aback, that seemed like an awful lot for 40 hours of usage. However, thinking about it some more, that wasn’t 40 hours of low and slow. You did quite a few high temp cooks which would consume more pellets per hour of cooking compared to low and slow. I’m curious to know if you have a sense for how many pounds of pellets were used in that 40 hour period? On my pellet smoker, I’m consuming about a pound of pellets per hour for low and slow. It doesn’t work for grilling so I only do slow cooks on it.

It doesn't appear to be worth the swap of the Smokefire vs. this new weber offering. I have had my Smokefire for about three years, Weber has replaced the auger assembly, the fan and the igniter assembly (twice). Let us know if you have any issues with the components on this grill. Weber really takes care of the customers all my replacements came fast and at no charge even after the warranty period. I'm not convinced that this new grill will be much different . Thanks for the Review!

I think all the ash that collects in the burn pot cover/deflector is a non-issue. If anything, it is insulation. You can see it catches in some valleys, as long as it doesn't cover the slots where the heat comes out of, It doesn't seem like it would be an issue. Definitely a different design that takes some getting used to, I guess. The main concern is ash building up in the pot itself, this can affect ignition.