Get Your Grill On

The Air-Grill - an indispensable tool at grillside

Posted by Guy
March 15, 2007

More than a few months ago Chilebrown stopped by to drop off some bacon he’d made and gave me this Air-Grill thingy. It’s a hand-held, hand driven portable blower that allows you to get a jolt of constant air in to your grill or smoker fire. At first glance it felt jicky and didn’t seem that’d blow much air. CB said he felt it worked quite well and I left it at that.

Over the coming months I used it more and more. While I don’t need help with getting the initial fire going, when you add cold hunks of wood to an existing fire, it’s nice to give it a jump start. Plus it means less of a temp drop in your smoker. Yes, yes I know. Preburn or heat your wood. But we don’t live in a perfect world and it’s nice sometimes to get some help.

My next job for the little beast was to assist the hickory chips to ignite cleaner. See, if you add too much smoking chips to your fire, you’ll get a lofty white smoke with clear tinges of brown. That’s bad, that’s creosote and it’s bitter. The Air Grill now allows me to get the chips going, worry free. I consider this tool as essential as my leather gloves, lighter and wood. I haven’t tried it yet, but I think it would be good for dust/coal maintenance for outdoor dutch oven cooking. Thank you CB for the best grill gift EVER.

Biggles