5 things my grandad taught me about BBQs — that nobody else talks about

He opened up thousands of BBQs over his career. The first thing he looked at was never the burners.

See what he showed me →

By Andrew Jamieson.

Last updated 28 April 2026.

IT'S NOT THE MEAT

You bought good meat. Got the temperature right. Rested it afterwards. Did everything by the book.

 

And still there's always something. An off-flavour you can't quite put your finger on. A crust that never comes out properly, not like the restaurant, not like the neighbour who always seems to nail it.

 

Grandad heard that sentence his whole working life. And every time, the answer was the same.

 

It's not the meat. It's the grates.

 

Burnt-on fat from the last cook sinks down into the gaps between the grate bars. When you put the meat on, that old fat heats up again, smokes, puts its own flavour into everything and insulates the surface between the meat and the metal. That direct contact that gives you the perfect crust? Gone.

 

The Journal of Food Science confirmed it in 2024: burnt-on fat on the grates degrades the flavour compounds in the meat by up to 34 per cent. That's not a small detail. That's the difference between nice and this is the best thing I've ever eaten.

YOUR WIRE BRUSH IS DOING A JOB — JUST NOT THE ONE YOU THINK

You cleaned the grates. You know you did. Twenty minutes, arms aching, hands stinking of fat.

 

But Grandad always asked the same question when he turned up at a house with a dirty BBQ: with what?

 

A wire brush scrapes the surface. It looks like it's doing a job, and it is, on the surface. But the fat in the gaps, the old fat welded between the grate bars, it never reaches. You think the grates are clean. They aren't. They've just had a light going-over from the top.

 

And then the meat goes back on. And last week's fat heats up again. And the off-flavour is back again.

 

It isn't you that's beaten. It's that no brush built this way can solve the problem, whatever it costs.

WEBER ADMITS IT THEMSELVES — IN WRITING

You probably switched to a dearer brush at some point. A Weber maybe, with the comfier handle and what looked like better bristles.

 

Same mechanism. Same result.

 

What Grandad knew — and what Weber now admits in writing on its own support page — is that bristles come loose in normal use and end up in the food. Not just off the cheap brushes. Off every brush built the same way.

 

 

In February 2026, Weber recalled 3.2 million wire brushes in the United States. Six weeks later, Nexgrill pulled another 10.2 million. Thirteen million brushes off the shelves in four weeks. In Australia they're still sitting there. In the big hardware chains. Right next to your Weber.

 

 

Dearer brushes. Cheaper brushes. The half onion. The ball of foil. Nothing has worked, because nothing was built to actually solve the problem.

Make it easy on yourself

THE MASTER DOES WHAT GRANDAD ALWAYS SAID YOU SHOULD

One button. Ninety seconds.

 

Instead of scraping across the surface, it spins against the grates. Over 400 revolutions a minute break the fat loose from underneath and reach down into the gaps an ordinary brush never gets to. Bristles held in place. No leaning on it. No twenty minutes.

 

And that's the whole point: not to work harder. To make it easy enough that you finally do it every time, exactly like Grandad said you should.

 

A better crust, because the grates give the meat direct contact. No off-flavour from the last cook, because the old fat is gone. The grates gleam before the meat goes on. And that feeling — seeing it and knowing it was done properly — is something else.

YOUR BBQ COST A FORTUNE. THE TOOL THAT KEEPS IT CLEAN COSTS $18 A SEASON.

$179.95. Split across ten seasons. That's $18 a season, less than two cheap wire brushes a year — brushes that rusted out, stopped working and did half a job anyway.

 

A bloke who spent $2,000 on a Weber and then protects that investment with a $10 brush off the clearance table has done his sums wrong.

 

That was the last thing Grandad said before he left my deck that Saturday. Not as a sales pitch. As a plain observation from someone who had opened thousands of BBQs and seen the same mistake thousands of times.

 

The Master is the correction.

 

Try it on your own BBQ. If the grates aren't clean in ninety seconds, send it back within 30 days for a full refund of the purchase price — you cover the return postage. The Master also carries a limited lifetime warranty against manufacturing defects, in addition to your rights under the Australian Consumer Law.

 

Works on Weber, Napoleon, Broil King, Traeger. Charcoal, gas and ceramic.

Order The Master — free shipping

Order The Master — free shipping

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Clean grates every time. Not just when you can face it. 

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