Help me decide between Webber charcoal summit or Kamado big joe.

Whisky said:

I used to be a big fan of ceramic cookers. Now, my XL BGE is mostly a very expensive charcoal grill (that hardly ever get's used).

For $1500 I'd buy a Rec Tec RT-700 and and Weber Kettle 26". There isn't much a person can't do with your gasser, a good pellet cooker, and a kettle.

Click to expand...

This (see above) is great advice and sort of gets you to the end of the Unicorn hunt without the expensive road to get there.

The journey for some will end with a UDS, Kamado, Kettle, or Pellet Smoker or most likely a collection of various cookers. The search for the perfect cooker (or Unicorn) is a verified sickness on this board and as a wise pit-master once told me, "The struggle is real".

For me, if I had known then (back when I didn't have any experience with smoking and equipment) what I know now, I might not have gone through various propane gassers, a couple BGE's, a propane smoker, multiple Traegers, multiple kettles, a couple of Akorns, several Traegers, a UDS, 2 WSM's, each of the 3 GMG's, a Cookshack Smokette, and Po'man grill (this was gift from my wife brought about by an instigator here that shall remain nameless).

I currently have a 26" Kettle, a GMG Davy Crockett, and Mak 1-Star and with this equipment, I have the versatility to grill or smoke just about anything for big gatherings or cooking for a treat just for me. The only piece of equipment I'm looking to get nowadays is the Mini- Mak, if it is every released and this will replace my GMG Davy Crockett. (I like small cookers because I often just cook for 2 of us).

Keeping in mind that you're just getting into the hobby and you don't know what you don't know, I'd have a difficult time dropping $1,500 on a single piece of equipment. Perhaps, take your time, get a used Trager on CL for around $250 to try out a pellet smoker. If you like it, keep it or get a higher end pellet smoker. If you don't like it, you can always sell it for what you bought it for. Used Kamados are much difficult to find, but they do pop up once in awhile. The safest bet is to get a 26" Kettle and learn to smoke on that for now and even see if you like smoking food. You can build from there and always keep the 26" for grilling.

RemoGaggi said:

This (see above) is great advice and sort of gets you to the end of the Unicorn hunt without the expensive road to get there.



The journey for some will end with a UDS, Kamado, Kettle, or Pellet Smoker or most likely a collection of various cookers. The search for the perfect cooker (or Unicorn) is a verified sickness on this board and as a wise pit-master once told me, "The struggle is real".



For me, if I had known then (back when I didn't have any experience with smoking and equipment) what I know now, I might not have gone through various propane gassers, a couple BGE's, a propane smoker, multiple Traegers, multiple kettles, a couple of Akorns, several Traegers, a UDS, 2 WSM's, each of the 3 GMG's, a Cookshack Smokette, and Po'man grill (this was gift from my wife brought about by an instigator here that shall remain nameless).



I currently have a 26" Kettle, a GMG Davy Crockett, and Mak 1-Star and with this equipment, I have the versatility to grill or smoke just about anything for big gatherings or cooking for a treat just for me. The only piece of equipment I'm looking to get nowadays is the Mini- Mak, if it is every released and this will replace my GMG Davy Crockett. (I like small cookers because I often just cook for 2 of us).



Keeping in mind that you're just getting into the hobby and you don't know what you don't know, I'd have a difficult time dropping $1,500 on a single piece of equipment. Perhaps, take your time, get a used Trager on CL for around $250 to try out a pellet smoker. If you like it, keep it or get a higher end pellet smoker. If you don't like it, you can always sell it for what you bought it for. Used Kamados are much difficult to find, but they do pop up once in awhile. The safest bet is to get a 26" Kettle and learn to smoke on that for now and even see if you like smoking food. You can build from there and always keep the 26" for grilling.

Click to expand...

Sage advice!

Whisky said:

I used to be a big fan of ceramic cookers. Now, my XL BGE is mostly a very expensive charcoal grill (that hardly ever get's used).

For $1500 I'd buy a Rec Tec RT-700 and and Weber Kettle 26". There isn't much a person can't do with your gasser, a good pellet cooker, and a kettle.

Click to expand...

For $850 I would get a Weber Performer and a 22 WSM. Best of both worlds for 1/2 the cost.

Whisky said:

I used to be a big fan of ceramic cookers. Now, my XL BGE is mostly a very expensive charcoal grill (that hardly ever get's used).

For $1500 I'd buy a Rec Tec RT-700 and and Weber Kettle 26". There isn't much a person can't do with your gasser, a good pellet cooker, and a kettle.

Click to expand...

^This.

Unless I am cooking for a large gathering, I can do anything I need on the 26" Kettle. The big daddy insulated Weber is on my wish list though.

I almost went with the summit Weber. When it came down to it big joe offers to me more options out of the box for you to try out learn and master. And yeah they definitely can get you on buy this for that and that for this add ons. I have grates,rotisserie’s, basket for wings and have bought some 3rd party setups for to maximize long cooks.

I looked at reviews on ceramics, Weber’s, gravity, pellet etc.. and well I now own a big joe, joe classic and Joe jr. always on the lookout for lightly used ones on areas like offer up or Craigslist’s.

As far as bad taste because of the efficiency of a ceramic cooker is a little laughable if the thought is you’ll always have some kind of weird taste. BGE has been around since the mid 70s and cheap copy cats are everywhere now, but people like Kamado Joe are pushing ceramic cookers to different levels. If you use cheap charcoal bad wood wrong wood etc no matter if you get a 50 dollar barrel, 4k stick burner, 20k competition cooker you can have tastes, poor results etc etc. A cooker doesn’t make a cook. A cook can use whatever he has in front of him and he’ll have the patience to get results that repeatable however he will want to improve on no matter how good people will complement him on his cooks. Getting into grilling you’ll have to learn enough of all different parts of grilling/bbq... woods, starting fire maintaining your fire. Meats, seasoning, etc etc.... Dealing with weather. Etc. I own a 22 year old Pitts and Spitts stick burner. I’m only 2 1/2 years into egg cooking, but efficiency and overall what I can do on them was what I needed. My stick burner is the most inefficient cooker, but you maintain and master that cooker and you will be amazed at the cooks it will do. I’ll never get rid of that cooker. I’ve messed up cooks on all cookers I’ve owned on all the parts I’ve referenced up above, but taking those lessons has been part of the journey to now when I can easily in my eyes cook things like below as quickly as I could make myself a pb and j or open a can of tuna.












Those are all Joe cooks.... you can get those results on Summit, or much more expensive cookers. Just take it easy be patience and learn from your mistakes.



Do all your homework and decide.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

redhawk said:

For $850 I would get a Weber Performer and a 22 WSM. Best of both worlds for 1/2 the cost.

Click to expand...

And if you are patient you probably could get them used for around 300 total. You can do a lot of cooking on a kettle and wsm.