Spring Cleaning
Posted by Eric Spicer on
It finally happened, spring has sprung. We know that you are all year round grillers, but it can be tough to find time in those frigid months to clean out your grill.
Now that the weather has turned warmer it's go time for getting your grill clean and performing optimally.
One of the first things we like to do is a good clean burn. 
No not like that.
Clean burning is a great safe way to get all the excess grease and carbon out of your ceramic grill. Its also a good opportunity to burn off anything on your stainless steel grates. Make sure your grill interior is dry before starting a clean burn.
What you want to do is fill up your grill with a full fire bowl of quality lump, get it going nice and hot, close the dome and open the bottom vent all the way. If your top vent has been sticking you can also stick that inside the grill on a grill grate during the clean burn. If you top cap is clean you can leave it off for this step. Let this burn for a while. You are going to see some very high temps. After the grill burns its way through the lump and cools down you can open your dome and see a nice white interior like when it was new. At this point we like to use an ash vacuum to get the inside of the grill totally clean. But an ash pan and ash tool do an great job too. During this process you may find that a lot of grease spits out of the top and lands on the dome, this brings us to our next step.
Exterior cleaning. For this step please wait until your grill is cool.
We like to use a good quality tile cleaner for this step, preferably something that is safe for tiled kitchens. Make sure your cleaner is in spray bottle and the spray bottle is set for the widest, mistiest setting. Its best to do the grill in sections. Start by spraying down half of the upper dome, wait for the cleaner to soak in and then give it a scrub with a clean sponge or microfiber cloth. Repeat these steps with the restof the grill.
If you did the clean burn most likely your gasket is now shot. Never fear, we've got a video showing you how to replace that gasket right here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=176q6E0NUNs.
After replacing your gasket you are good to go for another fun summer of grilling and smoking.