Grilling Time

We have been making do with a $30 grill for few years. It has not aged well. It has been rusting out from the beginning and we decided to upgrade to the charcoal grill that everyone seems to end up with - the Weber One-Touch Gold. It has a larger grilling area, holds more coal, has a neat cleaning system, and has more durable finish. It also has, to my surprise, a built in thermometer. Which is useful. The assembly was a bit more annoying than I expected, since the legs really take a lot of force to slide on and the bin underneath took more squeezing to snap it in than I expected.

Old rusty grill on the left, shiny new grill in the middle, and the coal chimney starter on the right

Fans on the Weber which can be moved with the lever (visible at 6 o'clock) to 1. let more air in and 2. push old charcoal into the bin below. The lid also has a latch to let you hang it off a handle.

The old grill has gotten pretty grungy. I really like how the new grill has hooks on the handles to hang grilling equipment

Thermometer

I have only used it a few times, so I'm still figuring it out how to best control the temperature. I have also had some problems with the coals taking a long time to heat up past 200 F. I found that the ash from previous grilling sessions was clogging the holes and preventing proper air flow.

After clearing that up, I opened up the bottom and top vents and can get the grill over 500 F.

If I close the top and bottom vents, the grill drops to around 300 F. The biggest annoyances are that the top lid handle gets uncomfortably hot when the grill is fully heated up and that the assembly is so fiddly. Fairly minor complaints. The real test will be to see whether the grill will still be going strong 10 years from now.