Three years ago I bought a Char Broil Kettleman (charcoal grill). I have smoked on it before but generally like to use charcoal when doing steaks as I can get ridiculously high heats on it. I also LOVE the grill grate design. For those of you not familiar with it, there is a great write up/review on it here: http://www.nibblemethis.com/2015/04/product-review-char-broil-kettleman-tru.html - Note: Not my review and I have no association with that blogger.
Anyway, back to the grill grate. It is hard to see in the pictures within that article but the grate is comprised of a bunch of rails that are in a point but hollow on the underside. Kind of like this: ^
What I've found to be very cool about that is that it GREATLY reduced flare ups. I theorize that the intense heat coming up, hits the underside of those rails, which pushes the heat down. However it works, it is great for minimizing flare ups.
There are a lot of things to like about this but here are my two issues:
1) I just ordered my 3rd grate for it due to pitting and rusting of the previous ones. In all fairness, they say not to use a wire brush on the grate, which I did on the first one and it chipped away the protective coating and and started pitting and rusting within 4 or 5 months. So when I bought my 2nd grate from Char Broil ($35 including shipping), I also bought a nylon brush and used that to clean the grate from that point on. That grate lasted around 2 years before the pitting and rust spots on the grate got to a point where I felt the need to replace it again. So as I said, I just ordered my 3rd grate and when chatting with the CSR, he said that the grates will only last about 2-3 years due to the porcelain coating on the grates. At this point, I started considering buying a Weber grill but looked at the standard grate for them and it is just a basic grate which would NOT prevent flare ups. And before you ask, "Why don't I just use half the grill with coals and the other half for indirect?" To which my answer is that 90% of the time I grill steaks, I use just about all of the cooking space on the grill. I DID find an awesome grill grate for Weber called GrillGrates, that it sounds like it does a great job of controlling flare ups, but it is also $125 just for the grate!
2) The 2nd issue I'm having with this grill is the legs are wobbling. I tightened them up the 1st time around but that didn't really do anything to them and they finally broke. Thankfully when it wasn't full of hot coals. I called customer service and they sent me a new set of legs for it and all the hardware to replace at no cost. So I replaced the legs and it was sturdy again. But again, it wasn't long before the legs are starting to wobble again. So I'm trying to think of a good way to shore up the legs to make it sturdy but am annoyed at having to do so.
As I said, there ARE a lot of good things to like about this grill and I understand (for the most part) about the grate, but the legs issue is just poor design IMHO. If they had welded metal female posts for the legs to fit into, it would be so much more stable. Simple design change.
At any rate, I decided that I'm going to run with this grate, one more time and if the grill legs get too bad, I'll buy the Weber and I should be able to use this grate on it as they are both 22.5". And then after the grate wears out, I'll bite the bullet and get those GrillGrates.
Hope this is helpful to someone and if anyone has had an issue with this grill's legs being wobbly, I'd love to hear how you resolved the issue (if you were able to). I'll follow up with what I ended up doing/trying.
Cheers!
G
Anyway, back to the grill grate. It is hard to see in the pictures within that article but the grate is comprised of a bunch of rails that are in a point but hollow on the underside. Kind of like this: ^
What I've found to be very cool about that is that it GREATLY reduced flare ups. I theorize that the intense heat coming up, hits the underside of those rails, which pushes the heat down. However it works, it is great for minimizing flare ups.
There are a lot of things to like about this but here are my two issues:
1) I just ordered my 3rd grate for it due to pitting and rusting of the previous ones. In all fairness, they say not to use a wire brush on the grate, which I did on the first one and it chipped away the protective coating and and started pitting and rusting within 4 or 5 months. So when I bought my 2nd grate from Char Broil ($35 including shipping), I also bought a nylon brush and used that to clean the grate from that point on. That grate lasted around 2 years before the pitting and rust spots on the grate got to a point where I felt the need to replace it again. So as I said, I just ordered my 3rd grate and when chatting with the CSR, he said that the grates will only last about 2-3 years due to the porcelain coating on the grates. At this point, I started considering buying a Weber grill but looked at the standard grate for them and it is just a basic grate which would NOT prevent flare ups. And before you ask, "Why don't I just use half the grill with coals and the other half for indirect?" To which my answer is that 90% of the time I grill steaks, I use just about all of the cooking space on the grill. I DID find an awesome grill grate for Weber called GrillGrates, that it sounds like it does a great job of controlling flare ups, but it is also $125 just for the grate!
2) The 2nd issue I'm having with this grill is the legs are wobbling. I tightened them up the 1st time around but that didn't really do anything to them and they finally broke. Thankfully when it wasn't full of hot coals. I called customer service and they sent me a new set of legs for it and all the hardware to replace at no cost. So I replaced the legs and it was sturdy again. But again, it wasn't long before the legs are starting to wobble again. So I'm trying to think of a good way to shore up the legs to make it sturdy but am annoyed at having to do so.
As I said, there ARE a lot of good things to like about this grill and I understand (for the most part) about the grate, but the legs issue is just poor design IMHO. If they had welded metal female posts for the legs to fit into, it would be so much more stable. Simple design change.
At any rate, I decided that I'm going to run with this grate, one more time and if the grill legs get too bad, I'll buy the Weber and I should be able to use this grate on it as they are both 22.5". And then after the grate wears out, I'll bite the bullet and get those GrillGrates.
Hope this is helpful to someone and if anyone has had an issue with this grill's legs being wobbly, I'd love to hear how you resolved the issue (if you were able to). I'll follow up with what I ended up doing/trying.
Cheers!
G