Sale In Aisle Five

This just in from the folks at Bubba Keg ...

The Home Depot has decided to reset the price of the grill to $599. This change should be in effect in the next three to five days. This was a collaborative effort to get the Bubba Keg Convection grill to a more affordable price. This is great news as it will make this new grilling product more competitive in the marketplace and more attractive to passionate backyard chefs.

Also, Sam's Club has now started selling the Bubba Keg Convection Grill in about 30 stores throughout Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee. The retail price at Sam's Club is also $599.

Cooking On The Bubba Keg

Well, I promised you guys some pictures and I put a couple up over the weekend. I'm sorry I didn't take more photos. They'll come in future cooks.

On Saturday I lit the fire in the Bubba Keg, oiled the grates and the dome's vents, burned off any miscellaneous packing materials and played with the fire. Dinner on Saturday was some chicken legs and grilled asparagus and Sunday was grilled rib eye with homemade potato au gratin.

Man, cooking on the Bubba Keg is intense. Cooking on this is very different from the other cookers I ever used. Here's some random thoughts...

• This thing is extremely effiecent with its use of fuel. A very small amount of lump provides a very hot fire. Two handfuls of lump maintained a 500 degree fire for over 2 hours. Three handfuls brought the temp to 800 degrees!
• Once this thing gets hot, it's almost impossible to cool it down. Opening the dome didn't seem to have much affect on the interior temperature. I had the cooker at 800 degrees and opened the dome for about 10 minutes. When I closed it, the dome temperature read 275, but returned to 750 degrees within one minute.
  
• I've got to close down the air dampers as soon as the cooker gets anywhere near the temperature I want. So far I haven't been able to get anywhere near the 225-275 degree temps I use for barbecue. I'll get there. I'm learning.
• The Bubba Keg is amazingly well insulated. Even with the fire raging at 800 degrees the outside of the cooker was still cool enough to touch. Yes, it was hot, but not hot enough to burn. At 500 degrees, it was completely cool.
• This thing is efficient! I lit the fire at 6:30 pm with three handfuls of lump and at 1:00am the interior temperature of the Bubba Keg still held at 250 degrees! Amazing.
• Living on a corner property on a well traveled street, the Bubba Keg attracted a lot of attention. I think I made a couple of sales over the weekend. Hmm, maybe I should become a distributor.

So, after playing with this puppy for a couple of days, I have to say I'm loving it! As a grill the Bubba Keg has been amazing. I've never cooked on any thing anywhere near as efficient. But now comes the fun part, mastering fire control on the Keg so that I'll be able to get into some low and slow barbeque. Stay tuned.

BTW - Just so everyone is clear, the people at Bubba Keg provided me and a bunch of other food bloggers with a free Bubba Keg for review, good or bad. I am not in any way affliated with the folks who manufacture, market or distribute the Bubba Keg.

Bubba Keg Assembled.

Wow. That was fun. Putting the Bubba Keg together is pretty simple, once I downloaded the assembly instructions. Why aren't they included in the box? Also, I was missing two screws. Not a good sign of quality control boys.

It took about 20 minutes to assemble the beast; almost as long as it does to unpack it! Be warned though, this is a two man job. Putting the keg on the stand is almost impossible for you to do alone. It can be done, but it's not pretty. Trust me.

Here's a picture of the lid opened up. You can see the upper chrome cooking grate and the lower cast iron grate.

The interior of the Bubba Keg is finished in the same enameled steel as the Weber Kettles and Smokey Mountain cookers. This is a great choice as it never wears out and is very easy to clean.

The top grate pivots out to allow access to food on the lower grate. This is a nice feature. When I first saw this in a video I was concerned that the upper cooking grate would bend with any weight on it. I tested it using a brick and the grate remained steady and strong.

The top lid can be closed and secured and latched closed. The latch is a cheap plastic tab that I don't see lasting very long. Poor choice of materials here Bubba Keg.

The top lid also includes a nice easy to read thermometer. Unfortunately, you can't calibrate the thermometer, but it's a nice feature none the less. I've always wondered why the Big Green Egg and the Weber Smokey Mountain or Kettles don't include at thermometer. They should.

At the bottom of the Bubba Keg, there is a screened air vent. It's interesting that they have calibrated the vent opening with numbers from one to five which match the calibration system on the lid. I guess I'm not anal enough but this seems a bit of overkill to me. I don't think I'll be tracking by number how closed or open I keep the bottom vent. Unlike the Weber Smokey Mountain which has three, there is only one vent in the bottom of the Keg. I wonder if this will affect how evenly the fire burns and there's only one way to find out. The screen on the vent slides back to allow cleaning and ash removal.

And finally here's a picture of the top vents. This is made of cast iron and is an interesting choice. I'm a bit surprised as cast iron rusts easily and quickly if it is not seasoned properly. This is going to be a pain to maintain.

Putting this guy together was simple. The packaging efficient and overall the Bubba Keg seems to be a quality product. There's a couple of things I'd like to change. I'd like to be able to fold down the side tables. I'd like a place on the base to store the Bubba Keg multi tool as well as the trailer hitch and associated hardware.

This weekend comes the real test... Cooking!

Monday I'll have some pictures from my first cook on the Bubba Keg. I'm excited to use this beast. Stay tuned.

Bubba Keg Archeology

I still haven't had time to cook on this beast, and it calls to me constantly, but here's some pictures of un-boxing and assembling.

On the left, here it is as delivered. Looking at the box, it's not much smaller than an 18 1/2" Weber Smokey Mountain.

This is a big box, if you're picking one up from the store, I hope you have a van or a pickup truck. I can't imagine trying to get that into a car trunk or back seat!

The shipping label claimed that the box weighed 235 lbs, but from the packing list it's only 135 lbs. I wonder what the Bubba Keg people paid for shipping.

Let's see what it's like when it's opened up. The outer layer of cardboard has been removed. It's very Nicely packed. That's the base placed on top of the keg. Lots of Styrofoam and packing materials in this box. It's not very environmentally friendly.

Removing the base and it's surrounding packing materials I open the lid and find a box and more packing materials.

This box is heavy. Below the box I find the handles, the snap on tables, the cooking tool (more about that later) and the two cooking grates.

Carefully removing all of that, I find.... Another box! This one is much lighter than the first. I feel like I'm excavating King Tut's tomb here. Every layer produces something new and exciting.

And what is in these boxes? One contains the wheels and the various hardware. The other? It's empty. Carefully emulating Howard Carter, I dutifully document my find but wonder, "Has this keg been violated by keg robbers earlier in the century?" I'm stumped.

All the various pieces of this bad boy are now scattered around my garage floor. I'm ready to begin. I open up the operation handbook and check out the schematic, read the cooking and operating instructions and glance over the instructions for attaching my Bubba Keg to my non-existent pickup truck and it dawns on me. There's no assembly instructions! I think I've solved the mystery of the empty box.

To the internet! More tomorrow.

A Preview: The Bubba Keg

I got a new toy yesterday; The Bubba Keg. Great name for what looks like what is a great cooker. I don't call it a grill. I don't call it a smoker. It looks like it can handle both.

The Bubba Keg is the newest cooker to hit the market that is dominated by The Big Green Egg and Kamado. Instead of using ceramics like the Eggs and Kamado do, the Bubba Keg is constructed of fiberglass insulated double steel walls. It's a hefty beast at 235lbs.

This looks like it's gonna be fun. Full review of unpacking, assembling and cooking on the Bubba Keg on Monday.

I'm really looking forward to this weekend! I'm cooking!