HELP! Pizza on a Weber 22.5

Direct! At the correct heat a pizza ahould only take minutes to cook. I get my stone to about 700 degrees then put the pie on. NY style. Your only cooking the crust and warming the topings. Trick to a NY style pizza is let the stone get very hot, then throw the pie on

I place a few firebricks beneath the stone. Doing it this way I have not had an issue with burning the crust.

I usually set a set a steel pan in the center of my charcoal grate and then dump the lit charcoal in around the pan so I have a nice circular pattern of charcoal. Sometimes I put some charcoal in the middle also but not a lot since I have at least a chimney full on the outside.

Direct can be too hot and cracks the pizza stone.

It is all about fire management: light about 20 coals in the chimney group 3-4 in the center of the coal grate and make a ring on the grate the aprox size of your stone. Add the cooking grate and the stone and open the throttle put on the lid and let it heat up.

Before we built our WFO (pizza oven) we used the pizza stone a lot.
Timing and constancy (heat qty/type) is key to getting a perfect crust every time. (an infra red thermometer is very helpful.)
*do not wash the stone, ever* It will take much longer to pre-heat and can cause it to crack.

IMO 700 deg. is too hot, you will get a cooked crust and only warmed toppings. We cook pizzas in the WFO at not much higher than 600 deg. deck temps.
Yes it can be done hotter but must be watched closely and have the right dough.

I really like the idea of two fire brick under the stone, a little more "thermal mass" and puts the toppings closer to the lid.

Look for a dough recipe that has a little more moisture, this will cook a little longer without burning. A few rolled out "samples" will help get the timing and temp right.

Have fun. Pr0n wanted!!

Here's how I do mine:

You can even do a ring of fire around the kettle and place your stone on some fire bricks. Let everything heat up well then cook your pizzas. works for me good luck!

Carolina Que, Cool idea, looks like it works great!
What is the top made of? Steel? do you put fire brick on top of that to hold heat?
BTW, that is what an "experienced" stone looks like!

Getting the stone close to the dome on both my kettle and my akorn makes for great pizza.

I used a wide angle lens so the perspective is a bit odd, but as mentioned by others raising the stone (cast iron pizza pan in this case) close to the dome top helps cook the toppings before the crust turns into char.

Nice piece of IRON!

Thanks guys! That is in fact a home made offshoot of the Weber one. I couldn't bring myself to pay the price they wanted for one considering I'm a fabricator by trade and read that the open top caused some uneven cooking of the pizza, so I had to improve it to my specs!!!

The top is actually a piece of 1/4" aluminum plate. Theory being that aluminum is a great reflector of heat and also a quick retainer of heat. I can get the whole thing heated to around 800* reflecting off of the top and at the deck in about 30 minutes and hold that heat for close to an hour with the fuel set up the right way.

I actally cracked that stone just after these pics the very next time I used it. It happened because I tried putting more charcoal just under the stone, and it cracked before I even got the first pizza on it.

Now, I use a Red Sky stone that's rated to 2500* so hopefully it won't happend again. Now, I have a pile of unlit lump banked to the back side and put about 1/2 chimney of lit right under where the stone sits and the rest on top of the unlit for the preheat phase. Once the stone is preheated, it will draw heat from the charcoal off of the side and maintain it's deck temp. That, coupled with the heat that's rolling over the top and off of the aluminum plate makes a really good pizza.

As far as fire brick above, I haven't done that yet. But you can bake bread on the upper deck. It get's to around 375* and holds pretty steady.

Oh, and I put a couple of wood chunks over the lit charcoal for the wood smoke aspect.

Bravo!
A couple quick tips:
As your pizzas get bigger, keep the sauce and toppings in the center lighter than outside and middle of the pie. They will cook more evenly and you won't get that near raw center dough.
Keep the fire bricks dry when not in use-they will heat up much more quickly.
(I hope those are fire bricks, look kind of liker pavers)
Heat your stone (ceramic coated) slowly, these are designed for conventional ovens that heat more slowly than putting on a hot grill.
Since it is ceramic coated, try other tings like fajitas on them!!
Congrats and ENJOY!

Great, bring on the Pr0n!!