I got one of these for my husband 25 years ago. We're still using it, but the closing vent on the bottom bit the dust last summer. I think it's time for a new one. Incidently, ours was never stored in the garage or covered.

Alright,

I am one that loves to grill, but doesn't know anything about grills themselves, really. Due to monetary situations I had to grill on the cheapest possible grill... The green Sunbeam camper grill. I'm sure you know what grill I'm talkin' about. For over 6 years it has been my grill of choice (hey it was only $10!) and has treated me well. Over these years I always dreamed about owning a "real" charcoal grill. I wanted the American icon, I wanted the Weber One-Touch. I heard all about how durable and well built it was, how it will last for 10 years+ and how it's just a step above the rest. After actually purchasing this grill I have a bit of buyers remorse. You see, before actually buying this I was looking at a grill from Char-Broil. It had the ash catching pan like the One-Touch gold, it had space to put plates and such (sorta like the One-Touch Platinum) and it had grates with adjustable height, not to mention all of this came at a price just $5 higher then the One-Touch Silver! Anyways, for the last 2 years I wanted nothing more then the Weber so I got it. Once I started puting it together I realized that this grill just doesn't seem to have $80 worth of craftsmanship. The legs are super-flimsy hollow aluminum pipes, very cheap. The itsy bitsy tabs that hold the bottom grate are slightly uneven so my bottom grate is a bit wobbly (also it's possible for the bottom grate to fall because the tabs are pretty small). A wobbly bottom grate probably doesn't make a lick of difference when it comes to grilling, it's just that it wasn't right, it's just one of those little annoying quirks. I guess I expected everything to be heavy duty. I expected solid metal legs and such. You can find an identical grill from Char-Broil for less then half the cost! I hear that Weber is a step above because they are built to last... well my cheap $10 Sunbeam is 6+ years old and I've never had any problems with it, it's all about how you take care of it. Personally, I think for the $80 price tag of the One-Touch silver, you should at least get the hinged cooking grate, but you don't.

There are good things however. First, it's just nice to have the American icon. There is a certain feeling that comes with grillin' on the good ol' Weber kettle. There are a TON of accessories made for it and replacement parts are extremely easy to find. The one-touch system is pretty handy (although hardly one-touch).

Overall I am still happy with the purchase, I love looking at that grill. It's probably gonna grown on me more and more as years pass by. Based on price I decided to get the Silver version, but the Gold might be worth looking at. Afterall you get a much better ash-pan (I modified my silver to be just as good though... just a little creativity should do the trick) and you get the hinged grate with the gold (although you can just buy this grate for $15-$20 and stick it on your Silver if you wanna)

Choose... but choose wisely.

I bought myself this grill for Christmas when nobody else got it for me, and now I've had it almost three months and have used it quite a few times. I bought it based on the Amazon recommendations, and the recommendation of FoodTV host Alton Brown in his book, GEAR FOR THE KITCHEN. Also, in perusing the internet, I found the "Blue's BBQ" web site from Australia. One reader asks, "How did the Weber become the icon for the Australian BBQ?" Blue had to disappoint the reader by informing her that the Weber is actually American. But if it has that kind of reputation in Australia, is must be good.

Judging from the reviews here, I'll have to wait 20 years to see how it holds up. It does live on my back porch, but with the Weber cover.

It is fairly easy to assemble, and in my humble engineering opinion, seems well-made and designed with few exceptions. The Silver model has an ash catch-pan hung between the legs. The pan sits on top of spring clips clipped to the leg. After how well everything else went together, this seemed really cheesy to me. If you're a prefectionist, you'll go nuts trying to level the pan.

I guess that the "one touch cleaning" feature is the vanes on the bottom that also act to adjust the temperature in the grill by adjusting the airflow. If you swish them back and forth, opened and closed, it'll push some ash through the vent in the bottom. The problem is that the vanes themselves are wide and flat, and half of the ash just rides back and forth on them. I think Weber overstates this "one touch cleaning" feature.

The vanes closely fit the bottom shape of the grill when assembled, but after a couple of uses, one warped. I don't know if this is from heat, or something I lodged under it. I had to disassemble the vanes, and bend the offending blade a bit, and it's been perfect since.

I am a bit disappointed in some of the accessories, like the tool rack and little side table. They hang on the edge of the grill, and compromise the otherwise pretty good seal between the lid and grill. They also sell a lid rack, but note that the lid does comes with a hook in it so you can hang it on the edge of the grill, although it is certainly not as easy as using the optional rack.

Based on recommendations here, I got the 22" (larger) model. I can't disagree with that. Unless you just don't have the extra 4" of storage space or REALLY need a good grill, but just don't have the money, get the bigger one. It doesn't use that much more charcoal.

The other thing I scratched my head over was whether to get the Silver or Gold model. The differences were not completely clear to me until I actually got the grill. First, the Gold model adds a catch can that fits closely to the bottom of the grill instead of the pan I complained about. That would be nice. Maybe when you're grilling, hot specks of charcoal won't fall out the bottom and burn your legs, and if you grill somewhere where you don't want a lot of ash, this might be worthwhile. But the Gold is almost twice the price of the Silver, and I had a hard time justifying the additional cost.

The other feature added by the Gold is a grate with folding sides to allow you to add more charcoal when doing a long roast. A handy feature for sure, if you're cooking includes that, but I found those replacement Weber grates locally for twelve dollars, so wouldn't pay for the Gold model to get them.

And I guess that's another advantage of the Webers in general: They're so popular, replacement parts are easily found locally.


Sometimes, I long for the built-in side table of the Platinum, but that's a lot of money.

The grill came with a small cookbook that has proved useful. I don't know getting burgers and steaks done right has been such a hit or miss, trial and error, proposition that most people make it out to be. You look up in the little book, "Beef, 1-1/2 in thick, well-done (I know, Alton Brown wouldn't like me), 10 minutes first side, 9 minutes second side" and they come out perfectly.

DEFINITELY pick up a Weber charcoal chimney if you don't have one yet. It's the best way by far to start the grill - no kabooms, no fumes, no smell, no dangerous fluids stored in your house, and a good use for Florida Today newspaper. If you want to try something different, pick up the book AMERICAN PIE by Peter Reinhert and try the grilled pizza.

This is the best grill you can buy; easy to use, easy to clean and cooks with more charcoal flavor that any other charcoal grill I've used. I use mine for anything from French Toast, pizza, fruit, to turkey. And you can get smoke pellets and add a great smoke flavor too. Most versatile grill I ever owned.

With all the previous positive reviews, I decided to give this charcoal grill (my first one) a try. We have a gas Weber Genesis Silver B, so we really like the Weber brand. We figured we couldn't go wrong. Oh boy was I mistaken!

Anyway, the Weber One-Touch Silver model is overpriced and not worth anywhere close to $80. You have to figure that most kettle grills work about the same...the only difference is the quality of construction and durability. Obviously, Webers will outlast all of the cheaper brands, and that's one of the major reasons we chose this grill. However, this particlar model (22 1/2" Silver) has a major flaw. The major complaint here is that the "ash-catcher" doesn't catch anything because ash doesn't fall straight down into the catcher...especially if there is even a tiny bit of wind blowing. We had ash flying everywhere! My patio, screen, clothes, guests, etc were all covered in ash!!! It was a big mess! THey might as well not even have the catcher there because it doesn't do anything. Unless you like cleaning or have a gigantic yard, stay away from the Silver model of the kettle grill.

We have since returned the Silver model and purchased the Gold model. We had to pay an extra $50 for the Gold model with an ash-catcher that actually catches the ash. But at least my patio and my guests aren't covered in ash anymore! Sigh!