I have two 18"ers in my cooking rotation. I use them when I'm cooking for just my wife and I and I don't want leftovers. I had one 18" Killa Grilla grate with no flip up doors which they both shared.
I like throwing a couple pieces of apple wood on the briquettes for almost everything I cook. It adds a sweet smoke essence and also spikes the temps in the kettle. I know you can put them on top of a grate but that doesn't do me much good on shorter duration cooks like cooking salmon (11 minutes indirect). To accomplish this, after heating the kettle and grate for 10 minutes I would have to put on gloves and lift out the grate. Then balance it on the edge of the kettle while throwing wood on both charcoal baskets. Then put the grate back in place and put the food on. Well last month in performing this routine, I missed one of the grate straps in putting the grate back in place. It fell into the charcoal basket, dumping the charcoal into my aluminum foil drip pan. Needless to say it was a pain in the ass picking up the hot coals and dropping them back in the basket one by one, while balancing the hot grate. Oh and of course the apple wood had already ignited and was smoking good. Man did my clothes stink that evening.
After this incident, I decided it was time to find a remedy. Killa Grilla had a single flip up door 18" model listed on their website. Thing is I prefer to cook using charcoal baskets on each side when cooking indirect. I messaged with the owner (Mark) of Killa Grilla and these are the custom grates he made for me.
Since the majority (99.9 %) of my cooks on these kettles are indirect, I didn't feel there was a need to have the flip up doors. I had him omit 3 bars on each side of the grate. This allows me to easily add the apple wood without having to use tongs lifting flip up doors. In doing this, it also made the grates a bit lighter which helps in moving the kettles around. May not work for some of you but for me, this will work perfectly.
Topic: Custom Killa Grilla grates (Read 1202 times)
