u/Bdm12

Hi all,

I’d like to hear your experience with the Weber food probes on the Searwood.

I was doing a reverse sear on a fairly large steak and the probe seemed to work perfectly during the low-temperature phase.

I cooked the steak indirectly until the probe reached 46°C internal temperature. My target after searing was around 51°C.

I then removed the steak from the grill, leaving the probe inserted in the meat, and cranked the Searwood up to high heat for the sear.

This is where things got strange: the Weber probe basically stopped responding. It kept showing around 48°C, even though the steak was clearly heating up. When I checked it with my Thermapen, it was already at 51°C+.

So the Weber probe was several degrees behind, despite still showing a temperature and apparently working.

Has anyone else experienced this with the Searwood probes, particularly during a reverse sear/high-heat finish?

Hey all,

I recently switched from a Weber charcoal kettle to the SearWood 600. Main reason was that I got more into smoking, and I understood the SearWood could handle both slow smoking and searing, so it looked like a good one grill solution.

Low and slow works great, no complaints there.

Where I run into trouble is grilling with the lid open, the way I always did on the kettle. Think boudin blanc (white pudding sausages), regular bbq sausages, bacon torches, chicken skewers. On the kettle I could get a proper Maillard reaction, crispy sausage skin that actually cracks, and some real charring. I can't reproduce that on the SearWood.

To get there I first heat the SearWood to 280 to 300°C using set temperature mode, not manual mode. Once it's up to temp, I open the lid to grill like I always did on the kettle.

What I've tried so far:

• Manual mode, level 10 (the max), lid open: grate temperature measured only around 155°C. (As seen in image below, temp is 154.6 °C at cooking height)
• Set temperature mode at 300°C, lid open: same result, grate temp around 170 to 180°C. The grill's own internal sensor reads about 145°C at that point. After a while running like this, it throws an E18 error (per the manual, that's a temperature drop notification).

So my question: has anyone actually managed to get proper open lid searing heat out of this thing? I know Weber's official advice is to use manual mode for high heat, but even at max manual mode with the lid open I'm nowhere near what I got on the kettle. Starting to wonder if the SearWood simply isn't built to hold high heat with the lid open, and whether searing on this grill is meant to happen lid down instead.

Anyone dealt with the same thing, or found a workaround?

https://preview.redd.it/c5qpd7syxiih1.png?width=1536&format=png&auto=webp&s=cf01168d80b064014ddd106cc0366b2b8e01738e