sdimartino

I’ve been using my Akorn Jr for going on a year, now. I empty the ash pan after each use, but today I noticed a fairly significant grease accumulation in there (photo attached). I’m worried this may cause ash to stick and potentially cause rust problems. Should I clean/degrease it? If so, what’s the best way to do that? Soap and dish detergent? Or is there some kind of spray degreaser I should use? Any tips appreciated.

Thanks for the tip!

I’m pretty new to the smoking game, so I’d love to hear (see?) the feedback you get. I will say, though, nice smoke ring!

I use the Weber paraffin cubes. Work great and cheap on amazon.

I clean out the ash pan after every cook. No exceptions. And I lightly oil the whole interior once in a while. I hear a lot of stories about rusted Akorns, and I think for the most part it’s probably people aren’t dumping the ash pan.

They should have thrown that sucker on the grill! Missed opportunity!

Beautiful work!

Man, I wish I had the patience (not to mention the skills) to build something like this.

This is a great question and I'd love to know the answer. I am brand spanking new to kamados and smoking. I have a Jr. that I absolutely love. It's the perfect grill for us right now because we're in a condo and I only have a tiny deck to grill on, but once we move to someplace bigger with a real yard I'd love to upgrade to one of their bigger units. I'm vacillating on whether I should get a steel or ceramic Akorn when I do finally upgrade. I'd really love to know if the additional cost, extra weight, and non-portability would be worth whatever advantages I'd gain from going with ceramic over insulated steel.

I've heard from Char-Griller themselves that more are currently being manufactured and will be available by late August to early September. They said they'd had an unprecedented run on all of their grills, probably due to the Shelter in Place order keeping everyone home with more time to grill. Glad it worked out well for them!

I just got my jr. Smoking stone! Ordered it a few weeks ago and it just came on Saturday. I’m looking forward to trying it. What are easier meats to start out with for smoking?

Thanks for the suggestion, guys!

Like drinking from a firehose...

Thanks for this! Reading through it now.

Hey, everyone, new guy here (to both the forum and kamado cooking). My question is about starting up the charcoal. Right now I'm using a chimney starter with newspaper, but I hate the bloom of acrid smoke I get from the paper, so I picked up some paraffin starting cubes. Unfortunately I can't seem to use the cubes with the chimney because they fall through the grate (I have to set the chimney on the grate because I don't really have anywhere else to set it, no concrete on my patio). Can I just start the coals by stacking them in a pile on the grate and sticking a cube in the middle of the pile? Or, let me approach this a different way... How do you start your coals up?