Many people think of a Traeger when they think of a Pellet Smoker due to the fact that they have run infommercials ad-nauseum, but if you are looking for a step up from the Traeger in terms of quality and built in options like wifi enabled controls and built in temperature monitoring, the Green Mountain Grill is your best choice in the world of Pellet Smokers. The Green Mountain Grills Wifi enabled pellet smoker allows you to control both the cooking temperature remotely with your phone, while also monitoring your internal temp with no additional gadgets as they are already built into the grill! The Green Mountain Grill has an app you can download to make the process super easy- this means you can smoke on the go! Sweet! Show  The Green Mountain grill has built in wifi, as well as an internal read thermometer so you can monitor your cook on the go! I love being able to multi- task! The Green Mountain Grill app has “profiles” you can select to give guidance on your cook. The GMG app has “profiles” you can choose to take the guesswork out of cooking. For example, if you want to cook Pulled Pork, it has a profile with suggested cooking temps, time and internal temperatures. You can also edit profiles according to your preference. If you would like to better understand how a Pellet Smoker works, my dad wrote a full write up on the basics here, entitled, What is a Pellet Grill/Smoker and How Do they Work? I have the Daniel Boone Series wood fired pellet smoker, which has 458 square inches of cooking surface. There are some cool features in the Green Mountain Grill, which shows their attention to detail and improvement to common faults of other pellet smokers:
This diagram gives a good understanding of the inner workings of the Daniel Boone Pellet smoker. Green Mountain Grills are only available via a dealer so plug your zipcode into their website and you can find one near you. The Daniel Boone without wifi is priced at $549, with Wifi around $749. You can test drive a grill at your local dealer to get the full run down on features and a test cook before you buy. My dealer always has a full keg of beer on hand and goodies on the grill on Saturdays which makes for a fun excursion. Do you have a pellet smoker? What have you cooked on it so far? I’d love to hear about your experiences! For my 2018 review of the GMG Daniel Boone wood fired pellet grill we grilled chicken thigh and plank cooked salmon fillet but did it live up to expectation? Star Rating★★★★☆ - The GMG Daniel Boone delivers succulent results, has a good thermal range, is phenomenally quiet and features WiFi control all for £749. It suffers from the same lack of flavour gripe that I have with most wood pellet grills but that said it's fully worthy of it's positioning in the top 3 wood fired pellet grills on the market for 2018. AssemblyMost pellet grills in this price range require you to fix the hopper / control unit to the main body but the GMG Daniel Boone comes ready assembled. The only parts to fix on are the legs, the flue and the insert the internals. Build QualityI can best describe the build quality of the GMG Daniel Boone as OK. The externals are painted steel rather than satinaless steel but at this price you can't really expect anything else. Certainly it will stay rust protected provided you don't scratch it but I would recommend storage indoors when not in use. The rubber coated wheels to one side and locking castors to the other make for ease of manoeuvring. FeaturesWith WiFi control included you really do get an awful lot of grill for your money. It's made in China so you have to balance the price against the build quality. The GMG Daniel Boone offers all the necessary bells and whistles that you'd expect from a wood pellet grill:
As you'd expect at this price the Daniel Boone is a single skin uninsulated cabinet but the optional extra of a thermal blanket to allows you to continue using this smoker into the cooler seasons. Having cooked on a number of Traeger grills I was was pleasantly surprised at the operating noise level of the GMG Daniel Boone. Or to be precise, the lack of noise. Over the years I've become accustomed to the fact that the set and forget benefits of a wood fired pellet grill have to be balanced out against the higher noise level. This grill however is one of the quietest that I've ever experienced. It's also nicely powerful with a high end temperature of 260°C (500°F) Negatives? Again just the usual one that comes with any pellet grill that uses the central fire pot design. There is a hot spot directly above the fire pot so food will cook quicker in the centre than at the edges. I cooked chicken over the centre and plank cooked salmon to one side and at 160°C (320°F) and everything was pretty much ready at the same time. Both the chicken and the salmon was supremely succulent but they might just as well have been cooked in the oven for all the wood smoke flavour that I could taste. Finally, the facility for just one meat probe. Even the entry level Traeger Bronson 20 has the capability for 2 probes. InnovationThe GMG Daniel Boone features two perforated baffle plates that sit one on top of the other. The idea is that these plates side laterally over each other thus the perforations are either in line allowing direct heat through to the food or the perforations were obscured by the solid area of the adjacent baffle plate constituting the "indirect heat" set up. Green Mountain Grills refer to this as their "open flame technology", a somewhat grandiose title for what effectively amounts to little more than a drilled hole. To be honest I didn't find it to be much of a boon (sorry - pun intended) and it really only had an effect directly over the fire pot. In short:-
SpecificationThe Summary specification of the GMG Daniel Boone is as follows:
Weights and measures:
Available accessories include:
All of the above accessories add value with the exception of the dome thermometer. The probe will be way more accurate as will the thermostatic control. The unit I cooked on was the painted black which retails at £759. There is also a version with a stainless steel lid which comes in at £849 VerdictBalance out the included features with the price and this makes the GMG Daniel Boone one of our top 3 wood pellet grills for 2018. Does Daniel Boone grill have WiFi?PRIME WI-FI – BLACK Adjust the smoke and temp from 150° to 500°F and keep it there. With a GMG grill, you just “set it and forget it.” You can produce succulent food, in your own backyard, which proves you're a pro. Is GMG better than Traeger?GMG has better heat efficiency and can reach temperatures over 500°F, while Trager can only reach temperatures between 450°F and 500°F. It might not seem like a big difference, but it will influence the dishes you'll be able to cook. Both companies offer solid warranties for their products and good customer service. Why won't my Green Mountain grill connect to my WiFi?If the grill still does not connect, it may have fallen back to Point to Point mode. If this happens, open the WiFi settings on your phone and check to see if the grill is broadcasting a network. If it is, start the connection process over. If it is not broadcasting the network, you will have to do a board reset. How important is WiFi on pellet grill?The big benefit of the WiFi board for me was the ability to make sure the grill was on overnight. I can easily wake up, check that the grill and meat temps are right, then go back to bed. |
