[Review] “Daniel Boone” Green Mountain Grill with WiFi
It’s not Summer in NZ at the moment, but that doesn’t mean you can’t have a BBQ in winter! By dodging dodgy weather in Auckland, I managed to use the “Daniel Boone” Green Mountain BBQ Grill a few times to bring you this review! The best thing about this BBQ is that I can remotely see and set on my smartphone what the temperature inside the grill is, and can also turn the grill on and off straight from the app, thanks to its WiFi capability! This BBQ Grill is powered by electricity and wood pellets and while you may think that by using electricity it will bump up your electricity bill, I can tell you it doesn’t!
Brief
The “Daniel Boone” BBQ Model comes with a digital control, a meat probe, a peaked lid for stand-up chicken / large fowl / rib racks, a convenience tray with utensil hooks, hard rubber tires and a venturi-style firebox for cyclone combustion.
It also has Sense-Mate, a thermal sensor which constantly monitors the ambient temperature. When it gets cold outside, it kicks the grill into Turbo mode so you don’t have to wait long for the grill to heat up!
Other features include a positive pressure hopper fan to prevent burn-back, “fan only” mode with automatic shut-off to blow ash out of the firebox after you finish grilling, a 70 x 40cm (432 square inches) stainless steel grate, and 35cm head clearance inside. It weighs 69kgs.
The “Daniel Boone” BBQ grill has a 8.6KG capacity side-mounted pellet hopper. This is the box which holds all your pellets in. Once it gets below a certain level, it will make an audible beeping sound, and if you have set up the smartphone app, it will also alert you through that.
The usage of pellets depends on the running temperature. The higher the temperature, the more pellets you can expect to go through.
How It Works
The “Daniel Boone” Pellet Grill has an interesting way of working itself: A motor turns an auger which feeds pellets into a firebox. There, a hot rod automatically ignites the pellets, and a combustion fan keeps them burning. A fan inside the hopper maintains positive pressure which prevents burn-back in the auger tube. A sensor mounted inside the grill sends data to the on-board computer ten times every second, and the controller adjusts the air and pellet flow to maintain the temperature you set.
The way it can maintain the temperature you set, is what makes this BBQ grill different from other BBQ grills e.g gas BBQs or Charcoal BBQs. Especially since you can set the temperature directly from your smartphone (See below for more details on this)!
Unboxing and Assembly
The “Daniel Boone” Green Mountain Grill was delivered to me on a wooden pallet, and it was huge! The BBQ grill required assembly from its box, and I had some trouble finding the instruction manuals underneath all the polystyrene and didn’t realise I had to flip the box upside down in order to start the assembly. Nevertheless, I eventually got it going by myself.
Installation took about an hour.
I was also sent the optional grill cover, as this BBQ would be staying outside in the backyard for most of the time! The grill cover is form-fitted, so it fits perfectly over the grill, just like a glove!
Green Mountain Grill Smartphone App
One of the reasons this BBQ Grill is unique from other regular BBQs is that it is WiFi enabled. That means that once this BBQ grill is connected to your home WiFi, coupled with the free smartphone app, you are able to control and monitor temperatures inside the grill, and even set food profiles depending on what you are cooking! A profile allows the user to preset temperature changes based on cook time, internal food temperature (through the included meat probe), or a combination of both i.e programmable controls.
Setting up the WiFi was pretty easy once I had read how to do it with the simple instruction booklet: Connect to the BBQ grill’s WiFi (which had a SSD of: GMG_DB_007), enter the password which is the serial number of the grill starting with “00”. Once connected, you can connect the grill to your own router (through ‘WiFi Mode’ in the app’s settings), so you don’t have to connect to the grill’s WiFi every time you need to use the app!
The main screen shows you the grill’s current temperature, and if you have put in the meat probe, it will also show the temperature of that. A timer and stopwatch are also on the same screen for your convenience.
Being able to set the temperature inside the grill while in the kitchen preparing the food at hand for cooking is pretty convenient and cool!
Transportation
Thanks to its sturdy hard rubber tires, locking front casters and side handle, the Daniel Boone BBQ grill is pretty easy to move around.
Usage
Once connected to a power point and turning on the “Daniel Boone” BBQ grill, it goes through three warm-up cycles before being able to be cooked on:
Once the warm-up cycles are finished (about 6 minutes), I set the temperature to the highest as I was going to be cooking some sirloin steak and pizza for my first cook on this BBQ! By the way, the temperature range for this BBQ grill is between 66 degrees Celsius to 260 degrees Celsius.
The benefits of a controlled temperature setting, allows you to “smoke” certain foods as well at low temperatures.
Finishing Up…
Once the food was all cooked, I put the “Daniel Boone” BBQ grill into ‘Fan Only’ mode. This clears up all the excess pellets in the firebox and will blow out some of the ash. In fact, the 4 times I have used this, there was almost no ash blown out! It just shows how little ash pellet grills actually produce! I will be cleaning out the ashes from the inside about once a month though, if used regularly especially in summertime.
According to the manual, the fans will continue to run for about 15 minutes and will then shut itself off. I then like to turn the physical switch to “Off” for safety reasons.
Conclusion
Overall, I am quite happy with the “Daniel Boone” Green Mountain BBQ Grill. The ability for the temperature to be set in a stable mode really makes cooking a lot more controlled, resulting in near-always perfectly-cooked food (mind you don’t burn it from forgetfulness though)! The WiFi feature of the grill is a very convenient feature as you can monitor and control your grill from anywhere in the house within WiFi range. The included meat probe is a bonus as you can check if you’ve cooked the meat enough on the inside without having to second guess whether it is cooked or not.
For $1,399 NZD it is not on the cheap side of things (but nor is it on the expensive side for this particular BBQ), but it is a great investment to make if you want convenience, and the ability to cook great food (including smoking food) with ease without having to worry about it much!
For more information on this BBQ grill, please visit: http://www.bbqgrills.co.nz/product/daniel-boone-pellet-grill/
