First giving a perfectly square fire below the center of the grate. With a heat diffuser plate above to spread that heat out. That’s basically how pellet grills and smokers currently work.
The other thing they seem to be trying to do is control the burn time and temp with the thickness and density of the fuel puck. So the user doesn’t have to.
Which is a complicated ass way to go about things.
The holes are just for airflow.
It’s common to denser and larger charcoal formats. Asian style extruded charcoal has a center hole running through it. And your various charcoal and compressed wood pucks always have holes and venting of various sorts.
As do what they call “biomass briquettes” which are densely compressed plant matter or charcoal pucks or logs meant as affordable easy to produce fuel in the developing world. Those often get sold as grill fuel in the west, as a funding source.
I mean, they were pushing an INTERNET CONNECTED WEED STORAGE SYSTEM.
Color coded little bottles + an app. For some ridiculous price that is infinitely more than 'free, using the old film cans (film? What?) or empty pill bottles you were already using."
The authorized fuel module might only last 30-90 minutes; but the (individual) packaging looks ready to endure on a geological scale. Do boring old durable paper bags lose the important volatile notes or something?
Apparently, yes. From the Meathead review posted above:
“Briqs are impregnated with plant based alcohol for ignition. You must use them immediately after opening the foil wrapper or the alcohol will evaporate.”
This doesn’t seem all that different to Cobb BBQs which have been around for years AFAIK. You could probably even use one of their ‘cobblestone’ blocks in this thing - they look like they might fit.
It’s not “dystopian”, it’s just piss-poor value for money.
For $500 I can buy a mid-range Weber kettle, a rotisserie attachment, a Slow’n’Sear, a chimney starter, and a decent wireless two-probe thermometer. That is a helluva better rig than “Spark” for any fast or slow cooking you’d care to do, and leaves $400 to spend on ribs and brisket.
How well does that thing work? Living alone it sometimes takes me 4 days to fill up my huge dishwasher and I’ve thought of buying one of the countertop models.
It does the dishes better than I do. But it’s sometimes a real puzzle to find out how to fit everything in it in a way that allow it all to be cleaned. Having the tray fully modular is a genius idea there. (I’ll have to test some ABS prints in it to see if I can print my own)
(But at less than 4L and around one hour per wash, doing two back to back is still less water and time than hand washing it all.)
There are a bunch of alcohol production methods straight out of the “if you give a process chemist a hydrocarbon and some energy…” school, so specifying that it’s not from that source isn’t total nonsense; but given how commonly a biological route from plant material is the economically preferred method it does feel rather like puffery.
I’m assuming that someone on facebook says that lighter fluid causes autism cancer or something.
