Weber Charcoal Summit Thread

[Doc_Holliday]

@ Baby Back Maniac....hey bud, I'm a subscriber to your YouTube channel, love your vids! I had a couple of questions about the summit and found this thread so I figured I ask here. I should also mention I am a rookie so I apologize in advance if the questions are a tad bit sophmoric.

1. Have you compared the temp readings on the lid thermometer with the internal readings of the electric probe you're using? The lid thermos on the Weber Kettle are worthless and I just wondered if they had improved the performance for the Summit?

2. Relative to your vid cooking side by side pork butts on the Kettle and Summit I found it hard to justify the cost of the summit, given the performance of the standard kettle.

3. I really love the kettle with the SnS, do you know if there are plans to develop a SnS for the Summit?

4. How do you manage adding wood chunks to the Summit during a long cook...brisket for example? Do you just load plenty of chunks at the beginning or do you actually remove the meat on the rack during the cook and add more wood chunks?

Thanks in advance for any clarity you can provide!

 

[wbzipf]

@ Baby Back Maniac....hey bud, I'm a subscriber to your YouTube channel, love your vids! I had a couple of questions about the summit and found this thread so I figured I ask here. I should also mention I am a rookie so I apologize in advance if the questions are a tad bit sophmoric.

1. Have you compared the temp readings on the lid thermometer with the internal readings of the electric probe you're using? The lid thermos on the Weber Kettle are worthless and I just wondered if they had improved the performance for the Summit?

2. Relative to your vid cooking side by side pork butts on the Kettle and Summit I found it hard to justify the cost of the summit, given the performance of the standard kettle.

3. I really love the kettle with the SnS, do you know if there are plans to develop a SnS for the Summit?

4. How do you manage adding wood chunks to the Summit during a long cook...brisket for example? Do you just load plenty of chunks at the beginning or do you actually remove the meat on the rack during the cook and add more wood chunks?

Thanks in advance for any clarity you can provide!

I am curious to hear BBM's responses as well, but having owned one since May, I thought I would take a crack at providing you response.

1), I find the lid thermometer to be pretty accurate and the variation between the digital thermometer reading and the lid reading has more to do with the placement of the digital thermometer probe (at grate level vs higher up in the dome). That being said, I will rely on my digital when smoking or BBQing.

2) You can cook wonderful food on just about any type of smoker/ grill, so to your point you shouldn't look at the WSCG as "producing" better food. Where the value proposition exists is in its ability to keep stable temperature, even through different weather environments, fuel efficiency, and overall temperature control. In these areas it is a superior to the less insulated less sealed standard Weber kettle (22" or 27").

3) there really is no need to develop an SNS for the WSCG, primarily because of the two level charcoal grate settings combined with the diffusion plate. With these two features included on the WSCG, it accommodates low and slow, two zone, and hot and fast grilling. The other advantage is in the WSCG setup for low and slow, unlike with the SNS, you get to use 100% of the food grate's surface area for smoking/BBQ.

4) you can do it either way, as both the food grate and diffusion plate are hinged which allow for easy refueling mid cook. Due to the thermal efficiency of the WSCG, however, I can run the WSCG at 250f for well over 14 hours on a full load of charcoal. For this reason, I tend to start out with my wood chunks interspaced amongst the charcoal in the beginning and am able to avoid the need to refill.

I hope these answers help.

 

[six501]

As another Summit owner and someone who is completely obsessed with this grill I am adding on to these:

I am curious to hear BBM's responses as well, but having owned one since May, I thought I would take a crack at providing you response.

1), I find the lid thermometer to be pretty accurate and the variation between the digital thermometer reading and the lid reading has more to do with the placement of the digital thermometer probe (at grate level vs higher up in the dome). That being said, I will rely on my digital when smoking or BBQing.

This is very true, it is pretty accurate. It caught me off guard at first. Much different than how the kettle dome temp reads, more distance plus diffuser plate to go through.



2) You can cook wonderful food on just about any type of smoker/ grill, so to your point you shouldn't look at the WSCG as "producing" better food. Where the value proposition exists is in its ability to keep stable temperature, even through different weather environments, fuel efficiency, and overall temperature control. In these areas it is a superior to the less insulated less sealed standard Weber kettle (22" or 27").

I've been doing cooks in the cold weather on the Summit since we got it. Temps in the teens and relatively long cooks on it when it is 15 degrees out. 15 hour pulled pork last weekend.

3) there really is no need to develop an SNS for the WSCG, primarily because of the two level charcoal grate settings combined with the diffusion plate. With these two features included on the WSCG, it accommodates low and slow, two zone, and hot and fast grilling. The other advantage is in the WSCG setup for low and slow, unlike with the SNS, you get to use 100% of the food grate's surface area for smoking/BBQ.

Agreed on this. I love my SNS on my Kettle but have no interest in one for the Summit. No need for it.

4) you can do it either way, as both the food grate and diffusion plate are hinged which allow for easy refueling mid cook. Due to the thermal efficiency of the WSCG, however, I can run the WSCG at 250f for well over 14 hours on a full load of charcoal. For this reason, I tend to start out with my wood chunks interspaced amongst the charcoal in the beginning and am able to avoid the need to refill.

I did 15 hours in below freezing last weekend with FOGO lump. Had to add a few twice, mainly due to not starting out with enough. You can flip the grates up pretty easy and if absolutely necessary remove the whole grate with the meat on it in about 10 seconds.
I hope these answers help.

 

[LeakyLogic]

New Member and Weber Summit Charcoal

Hello all,

I am a new member here. Look forward to becoming a better bbq-er. My wife is laughing at me right now about my obsession. At least she was kind enough to let me get this Weber Summit Charcoal grill. Thanks honey.

Did my first smoke with four 7lb pork butts last weekend. Put dry rub on the day before. I used cheap lump from my local Walmart. The two butts on the top shelf finished in 12 hours @ 225 +/- 15. That temp was at the lower grate. The other two an additional 6 hours. They all were cooked until 205 degrees and turned out tender, not dry and with a hint of smoke. The dry rub made a nice bark. I did not wrap them at 170. I wrapped and rested them in a cooler for 4 hours when finished.

Being this was my first extended cook on this grill, I was unsure how much charcoal and how best to start it. I’ve seen people using chimney starters with the minion method or starter cubes on the left side because the fire burned to the right. Others simply used the gas ignighter and mixed the coals.

I decided to use a half chimney of lump and just pour it over the entire top of unlight coals. I had trouble fitting the deflector plate because of the amount of coal. Four chunks of hickory were added to the charcoal before lighting.

The target temp was easy to achieve, but I did not like the color or quantity of the white smoke from all the wood. I waited about 45 minutes until the smoke looked more like I expected before adding the pork. I suspected that there were no more wood chunks, so after the meat was added, I dropped in one chunk every hour or two. Four chunks in total.

Managing the temperature was way easier than my modified $30 smoker previously used. It seemed that the temp would creep down from 225 to 216 during the course of three hours. The first time I thought the charcoal created a black hole and extinguished itself. I went to add another chimney, but all it needed was a stoke. Later I found out that if the temp drops, open the vent more, until the temp climbs, then close it back down. This was my plan for the eighteen hour cook.

Since the cook, I made some tools to assist in adding coals and stoking the fire, without disturbing the food.

Now to my questions.
Why would the coals need a kickstart every couple hours?

Is this the nature of lump charcoal?

Does this grill prefer 250 instead of 225?

I look forward to learning new tricks and sharing my follies.

 

[wbzipf]

In my experience the coals don't need a kick start every couple of hours. Rather, you may be doing a little temperature chasing with all your vent changes. I suspect that your original vent setting was giving you an equilibrium temp of 216, you would open it and let it climb a bit, only to turn the setting back to the 216 equilibrium setting. I would suggest that you make only very slight adjustments to the top vent, and before changing it again (down or up) make sure you have reached equilibrium temperature at the new setting. The key is to have patience with each vent change to allow the WSCG temperature to stabilize at that setting before making another move. My experience it usually takes about 30 min before temperatures will fully stabilize after a slight vent adjustment.

 

[bucko]

Looks like Kevin likes popcorn that's funny he might need another Pepsi