Being that I've had no problems whatsoever, I find myself massively perplexed about what's going on. I've been following the hysteria on multiple forums and it's completely out of control. Here is where I'm at with this thing:
1. If you know anything at all about failure mode and exception analysis, you can deduce that if a sample of a population has a problem, and not the entire population, and the problem is not consistently reproducible, the problem is not design.
2. This is a new product, and isn't perfect but, in my opinion, is of sound design. That said, the defect rate is going to be higher as Weber workers learn how to assemble this new product. This could lead to a systemic issue around QA, resulting in some/many cookers having a defect. This doesn't mean they all do, because they don't.
3. Many of the people posting on the Internet have absolutely no idea what they're doing. This 100% doesn't not apply here, clearly. However, many are coming from gas grills, Masterbuilt, etc etc etc. They think that you can just start cooking without managing your ash and grease and nothing will go wrong. That is a wild expectation that isn't going to work for any cooker.
4. People aren't following instructions: Justin posts a grease fire and the whole Internet is losing its mind. Weber suggests a drip-pan and clearly states not to cook with the lid open and, yet, he cooks without a drip pan and leaves the lid open and here we are. Can the Smokefire have a grease fire? Absolutely! Should you leave any cooker right next to your home unattended? Absolutely not! There are few cookers that won't have a grease fire if not properly maintained and improperly used.
5. The hopper issue is mind-blowing to me. I have used an entire bag of Weber pellets and two bags of BBQer's Delight and not found the need to touch any part of my hopper. All of my pellets feed and I have had no jams or temperature control issues. Reading comments around the Internet, it's clear that people aren't managing their ash and aren't going through the shutdown process. Just throw some meat on, crank it up to 600F, leave the lid open and let 'er rip fellas!
While I can appreciate that the cost of a Smokefire is not a trivial amount to some, most of us here have invested an order of magnitude more on some very expensive equipment. This is not a premium, high-end cooker. That said, it does work, but I'm certainly not going to jump into untested waters head-first, buy a 'cheap' cooker and then look for every little reason to nit-pick the thing to death.
I think everyone needs to take a step back and use the massive brainshare on this site to really understand what's going on. Ask yourself these questions:
Was the cooker properly assembled?
Is it being used per the documented instructions?
Is it being maintained per best-practice and common sense?
Is somebody rendering a lot of fat with the lid open or on a high temperature?
If not, and there's still a flaring problem, have you vacuumed out your ash before cooking? Have you removed the grease from your last cook?
I honestly don't care about Weber at all. I have a couple of WSMs that I haven't cooked on in years as I prefer other gear. That said, it is my objective opinion that they did a good job with the Smokefire. My only problem here is with watching the BBQ community swirl the drain around a toxic cloud of fear, uncertainty and doubt.
For those of you with some influence, please refrain from posting half-baked assessments without a thorough analysis. The need to quickly get some of these videos up on Youtube has not paid service to the product, or BBQ in general.
Thanks.