One of the most unique smokers I’ve seen on the market is the concept of a gravity-fed charcoal smoker. So when a rep from Middleby, the parent company of Masterbuilt, reached out to me earlier this year offering to send me the Masterbuilt Gravity Series 600 Charcoal Grill + Smoker, I jumped at the chance.
After all, who wouldn’t want to check out a grill that combines the flavor of charcoal (and wood!) with the ease and control of a pellet grill? I certainly wanted to. And now that I’ve used it for a while, it’s time to give you my thoughts.
How does the Masterbuilt Gravity Series 600 compare to a pellet grill in terms of ease of use and flavor? How does this work? Let’s dive in.
Overview Of Masterbuilt
Masterbuilt got its start back in 1973 when its founder, Don McLemore, made a propane fish cooker in his own backyard. Now Masterbuilt offers propane and electric smokers, charcoal grills, and the combination Gravity Series charcoal smokers and grills. Masterbuilt also owns Smoke Hollow.
Masterbuilt is part of Middleby Residential along with Kamado Joe.
Assembling The Masterbuilt Gravity Series 600
The Gravity Series 600 comes in two large parts. The main cooking chamber already has the upper portion of the charcoal hopper attached which is nice. I did need to flip the cooking chamber upside down to install the bottom portion of the hopper that also has the control fan attached.
Thankfully, Masterbuilt opted for all of their wiring to join with connectors. So no electrical engineering degree needed to put the grill together. You will need to be prepared with a screwdriver because there are a ton of screws for assembly. And some of those screws were in awkward or tight spots that required a decent amount of contortion.
And when I started attaching the legs, I encountered a a couple of little oddities. First, the legs were not all together in the box. I had to double back and find a leg under the grill grates. I may have felt like I was losing my mind for a few moments, but crisis averted.
Secondly, I was nervous about the feel of the legs. They did not feel like the strongest, most solid grill or smoker legs I’ve encountered. However, once I had all the legs installed and the grill upright, I’ve had no issues with wobbling or moving the grill around. So even if you’re assembling and questioning the structural integrity, there is no reason to be concerned in my experience.
Thirdly, I had to repeatedly loosen some screws once I had the legs in place to tighten down some other screws. It’s simply a little annoyance that quickly passed. But just be aware that there might be some situations where you need to go back and at least loosen some previous work done to make everything fit properly.
Overall, assembly was a bit cramped due to working in some tight areas, but there was no major issues encountered. And I’m a big fan of wires with connectors for plugging things in. That’s especially helpful considering the controller shelf does not come preattached to the body of the smoker. But once I had it screwed in place, I was simply able to plug in the thermocouple for the thermometer in the cooking chamber and clip in the fan and magnetic switch wires. Then everything was good to go!
Masterbuilt Gravity Series 600 Specifications
- Lower Rack: 360 square inches
- Upper Rack: 240 square inches
- Total Rack Area: 600 square inches
- Hopper Size: 12 lbs of lump/18 lbs of charcoal briquettes
- Weight: 168 lbs
- Dimensions: 49.14 H x 48.5 W x 23.68 D
- Temperature Range: 225°-700°F
- Wi-Fi Connectivity: Yes
- Bluetooth Connectivity:
- Included Meat Probes: One
- Warranty: One-year warranty
Masterbuilt Gravity Series 600 Smoking Performance
I’ve smoked on a number of smokers and grills during my barbecue journey. I’ve cooked on small portable pellet grills and big Lang offset smokers for barbecue fundraisers at my church. I love the convenience of a pellet grill for smoking in my own backyard, but they don’t deliver the same flavor as an offset smoker.
But you know what does? The Masterbuilt Gravity Series 600. I was blown away by the flavor the first time I smoked pork butts on this smoker. I threw in a couple of chunks of oak mixed in with the charcoal because it’s what I had on hand. And you could taste the wood (and the charcoal, too).
I’ve even smoked without adding wood to the charcoal. It still tastes amazing. Overall, I can’t be more happy with the flavor of anything I’ve smoked on this smoker.
That doesn’t mean the Gravity Series 600 is perfect. Especially early on, I dealt with a lot of smoke escaping around the top of the charcoal hopper. I followed the manual’s advice for tightening the latch and that helped a little bit. But I still saw a lot more smoke escaping than I liked.
So I laid a sheet of aluminum foil in between the lid and the hopper, and that made a huge difference. It also had another pleasant side effect: It helped preserve more charcoal after shutting the grill off (but I will get into that a little bit later).
But overall, I absolutely love everything I’ve smoked on my Masterbuilt Gravity Series 600. It combines the flavor of cooking over charcoal and wood with the simplicity and control of a pellet grill.
But the 600 isn’t just limited to smoking. No, that temperature range with 700°F top-end heat is real.
Masterbuilt Gravity Series 600 Grilling Performance
I don’t do it all that often, but I have cranked the heat on the 600 a few times. When I pushed it to 700°F to do a quick sear on a reverse-seared tri-tip, I actually had some flames coming into the cooking chamber.
And let me tell you, you can absolutely get a sear on this grill. And a part of that is the reversible cast-iron grill grates. The two main-area grates have a “Smoke” and a “Sear” side (and are even labeled in the cast iron as such). The grill grates accomplish this by using a triangular design. The smoking side narrows to a point to allow for as much smoke to pass through to the meat. The searing side widens to a flat surface to give you plenty of contact to get wide grill marks.
I also think that for things like burgers, just increasing the temperature to 400°-450°F is perfect for getting a good sear without overcooking or burning your meat. That’s exactly what I did, and I enjoyed the results. You could even reverse-sear some thick burgers.
Overall Fit And Finish
I think the Masterbuilt Gravity Series 600 is a nice-looking grill. The black body is sharp with a silver handle and a MASTERBUILT badge on the lid. I’m also a big fan of having an extra work area with the front shelf as well as the flat surface over the controller.
However, the handle gets really close to the front shelf. Like I nearly hit my stack of burgers on my plate close. So it cuts the front shelf’s usable area almost in half. And the shelf doesn’t stick that far out.
And as I noted in the assembly section, I wasn’t thrilled with how the legs felt during the installation process. But I have had zero issues with moving my grill around my backyard, so it’s more of a quibble than an actual issue.
I do like the fact that it has a removable ash pan in the bottom part of the charcoal hopper area. It effectively catches all the ash and makes it easy to clean up after everything has cooled.
Ownership Experience
The Masterbuilt Gravity Series 600 might be the most divisive smoker I have on my property. On the one hand, and in my mind the most important part, the food that comes off this grill tastes incredible. I’ve smoked quite a lot of pork butts for pulled pork on this smoker (using our Kansas City-style brisket rub because it’s amazing for pork!).
If I’ve got charcoal on the property, I’m almost always firing this grill up when it comes time to smoke or grill. It just tastes better than anything I’ve ever cooked on a pellet grill. And I love my pellet grills.
On the other hand, I’ve had a few issues with this grill. The biggest one was the failure of the magnetic switch system. The two hopper doors use magnetic switches to notify the controller that the hopper doors are either open or closed. If the hopper doors are open, the controller shuts off the fan as not to stoke the fire.
What happened was that I opened the top hopper door to check on the charcoal level, but when I closed it, the controller still thought the hopper was open. It helpfully (in its mind) continued to show “HOPR” on the display screen despite me having the hopper latched shut.
So I had to reach out to Masterbuilt to get a replacement magnetic switch kit. Thankfully, replacing both sets of switches took me less than an hour and I’ve had no issues with them since.
However, the fan did not want to fire up when I went to use the grill after replacing the switches. No, I did not have to get the fan replaced. I found out that this can happen if the grill sits long enough and simply pushing the fan with a Q-tip to kickstart it fixes the issue. And once again, I’ve had no issues with the fan since that.
The last issue I’ve had is related to the hopper itself. I mentioned above in the smoking performance section that I added a piece of aluminum foil to the top hopper lid to help trap more smoke inside the hopper. That was because I had a lot of smoke escaping around the lid’s gasket. Early on, I was losing a good amount of smoke and thereby burning charcoal much more ineffeciently.
This also caused air to continue getting into the hopper even after shutting off the grill and putting the two intake slides back into the hopper. Rather than the airflow choking off and causing the fire to go out and preserving the leftover charcoal, my grill continued to burn slowly. One time, the top lid of my hopper was still warm 10 hours after shutting the grill off. That meant a lot of wasted charcoal.
But a single sheet of aluminum foil on the top of the hopper cut all of that down drastically. Now, in the user manual, Masterbuilt does talk about tightening the lid latches if you’re losing smoke around those spots. I did tighten the latch on the upper lid, and it did help. But I was still losing more smoke than I would care to, and the sheet of aluminum foil really did the trick, in my opinion.
There is one other little quibble, and that has to deal with cord storage. The power cord has a locking twist connector that dangles just below the controller. I actually do like the twist and release mechanism. However, there is no dedicated cord storage space on the grill. So I detach it and store it indoors every time I finish using my grill. It’s not a serious issue, but it would be nice to have a dedicated spot to wrap it up at the grill.
So that’s why I would call it the most divisive smoker in my arsenal. But as I said in the beginning, it’s also my go-to smoker. At the end of the day, the Masterbuilt Gravity Series 600 produces amazing food. It maintains a steady temperature throughout the cooking process like a pellet grill. But it delivers all the flavor you’d expect from a smoker fuelled by charcoal and wood.
And that’s why I love cooking on this grill.
Masterbuilt Warranty And Customer Service
The Gravity Series 600 comes with a one-year warranty. If you are looking to get support from Masterbuilt, they have a form on their contact page that you can fill out to get assistance.
Do I Recommend The Masterbuilt Gravity Series 600?
With everything I’ve said, would I recommend this grill? I certainly would if you’re willing to tolerate some issues that may creep up. I’ve certainly had to do more tweaking and work on this grill than my biggest pellet grill. But there are two main reasons why I would recommend the Masterbuilt Gravity Series 600.
One, the flavor I get from using this smoker. I’ve said it multiple times and I will continue to say it. The food that I’ve smoked and grilled on this smoker tastes amazing. I’ve smoked turkey on this smoker that I did not brine beforehand, and my family said it was the best turkey I’ve ever made. And it gives me good grill marks when I crank the heat, too.
And the very first piece of meat I smoked on here was a reverse-seared tri-tip. The beauty of the Masterbuilt Gravity Series 600 is that it’s not only a great smoker, but it’s a great grill. So reverse-searing is so easy with this grill, whether you’re doing a tri-tip or a thick steak.
Secondly, the price point. The Masterbuilt Gravity Series 600 retails for solidly under $1000. It’s vastly more affordable than a high-end pellet grill. There are certainly good value-priced pellet grills in the same price neighborhood, but none of them will produce the same level of flavor this smoker does.
What I Like…
- Great wood and charcoal flavor with pellet grill-level control
- Huge temperature range for smoking and searing
- Reversible grates, one side perfect for great grill marks when searing and the other side nice and small for minimal contact allowing the most smoke-to-surface exposure as possible
What Makes Me Angry…
- Some issues with smoke escaping and charcoal burning long after shutoff
- If you don’t insert the fire starter in far enough, it won’t effectively catch the charcoal. But if you slide it in too far, it’ll just fall into the ash pan
- The front shelf is nice but only able to use about half the space most of the time due to the lid handle being so low
Final Thoughts
I cannot say that the Masterbuilt Gravity Series 600 charcoal smoker and grill is perfect. But it’s a testament to the quality of food it produces that I love it (and use it) so much. If you’re willing to tinker a little bit, I think this is one of the best smokers out there at this price point. It’s why I’ll be consistently firing it up for both smoking and grilling purposes.
If you’re looking for a new pellet grill, check out my first look at the new Traeger Woodridge series of pellet grills.