Weber kettle flaw

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Jrogers84

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I’ve never understood why they put the dome therm on the opposite side of the vent. Whenever you’re 2 zone cooking you have the therm right over the coals. Has anyone ever added a therm to the vent side?


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I hear ya, I have a tel tru I been meaning to add on the vent side but have not yet
 
The Weber lid thermometer is pretty useless. Have seen the one in my WSM register +/- 40-50° from the grate temp probe. To me it's just a rough gauge to let you know if your fire is either petering out, or it's time to get the fire extinguisher.
 
I’ve had the same thought lottts of times...

They ain’t changing it after all these years...

#rollwithit
 
Yeah, agree. I also consider mine pretty useless. Almost all my cooking is indirect. I put a cheap therm from home depot on it. I drilled a hole about where the curve down starts to get steep. It’s maybe 4 inches to the side of
the exhaust port. Works great!
 
I’m sure you can buy the thermometer and grommet and install one yourself. I just added a thermometer to my old WSM 18” that was so old that it didn’t have one. Both parts were available on Amazon and It was literally one hole and a thumb screw on the thermometer to install. I did trim the alignment tab off the grommet so I didn’t have to drill a second hole. I just aligned the thermometer upright before tightening the thumbscrew.


I do agree that the grate temp is off from the dome temp. When I upgraded to the dome thermometer I also added the Weber silicone probe port right under the grate level. It has a hole The is meant to insert a pit temp probe. The grill lever temp is 25° warmer than the dome temp in my WSM 22.

Chris
 
Factory therm is useless anyway. Drill a hole and put a Tel Tru wherever you want.

14kk1g4.jpg
 
Useless? I think not. I always put the therm over the meat being cooked. I realize that lid temp and grate are not the same. It's more of a reference point for me. I know what's going on with my fire and I know how to cook. I can take it from there...
 
I find it somewhat useful when I'm doing high heat indirect cooking (which is most of what I do). It's not close to an accurate reading of the grate temp on the vent side where the food is as you noted but I've done it enough that I know that if I have it reading about 500 or a little more whole chickens come out great. I have no idea what temp that means I'm actually cooking at -- obviously something meaningfully less than that but whatever it is seems to work. If I see I'm up more like 600 I close things down. Down in the 400 range open them up. Nothing remotely precise. It will be interesting to see if I need to recalibrate my thinking now that I've upgraded to the 26"

For smoking something like a butt I never look at it. I go ahead and use a Digital probe so I have an idea of what's really happening.
 
Jrogers84 said:
I’ve never understood why they put the dome therm on the opposite side of the vent. Whenever you’re 2 zone cooking you have the therm right over the coals. Has anyone ever added a therm to the vent side?


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Click to expand...

Since most of my cooking is indirect, I've added one to all my kettles.
Even the Smokey Joe's.
 
For years I had a kettle with no dome thermometer. Now I mostly just ignore it and if I need to use something at grate level.
 
I have wondered the same thing... why doesn’t Weber place the thermometer on the vent side? That said, when cooking indirect with the thermometer over the fire, I have found my indirect side to average about 100° cooler than what the thermometer registers. Gives me a pretty good gauge as to what’s going on. This thread may push me to add a Tel-Tru though... :)
 
I’m glad I’m not the only crazy person thinking this. I don’t use the therm as an actual therm, more for reference. I think I’ll give adding one a run. I like the cork idea so I don’t have to drill a hole but think it may mess with airflow?


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Last edited:
I have a Master Touch from a few years back and the thermometer is at 90 degrees to the vent. Works much better. The dome temp is usually 20C higher so it's an easy way to know what the kettle is doing.

weber-barbecues-master-touch-gbs-system-edition-57-cm-ivory-823993-1.jpg
 
The few times I need precise temp monitoring I place either a probe or thermometer at grate level. The dome therm, even off the flame, is pretty useless.
 
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