On the last earnings call for Camp Chef’s parent company, they announced there would be a “game changing launch planned for October 1st”. While they were a little wrong on the date, they were right that their new launch could be a game changer. They just released a teaser for the launch of the Camp Chef Woodwind Pro (click for update) on September 26th, 2022
Camp Chef Woodwind Pro
The two biggest complaints you hear about pellet grills is they can’t sear and they don’t produce enough smoke flavor. Camp Chef came up with a solution to the former with their Apex dual fuel grill (it uses pellet and propane) that they launched earlier this year, now it looks like they are trying to solve the latter. As you can see below in an image that Camp Camp sent out in an email teaser, the Woodwind Pro cooks both off of pellets and wood to add smoke flavor.
Operation
It’s difficult to tell from the teaser how exactly the Woodwind Pro operates. You can see the Woodwind style pellet hopper and that they’re top loading wood into some burnt embers. It’s very likely that you use pellets for temperature control and wood for smoke flavor.
Oklahoma Joe’s developed a similar idea that hasn’t made it to market, if it ever will, and Pitts & Spitts just released the Hybrid. What is different about those designs is that one side of the grill is a pellet hopper and the other side was a true offset smoker firebox. This allowed you to run the smoker on both or either fuel sources. With how the wood is loaded on the Woodwind Pro in the teaser, it doesn’t look like a conventional offset firebox.
You can see in the teaser that the back of the smoker has a handle, so that may pull out to reveal the fire box for the wood. If that’s the case, you could run the smoker off either fuel source independently.
Conclusion
The Woodwind Pro is an exciting innovation in outdoor cooking. Having the convenience of a pellet grill with the smoke flavor of an offset expands the capabilities of a pellet grill. We’ll be eagerly waiting for September 26th to hear more about it.