Cleaning a Weber Bullet

The virtual bullet website has instructions on how to clean the cooker, including washing and scrubbing with warm, soapy water the lid, cooking section and charcoal bowl. Is this a good idea? I thought the cooker should be allowed to accumulate residue to get "seasoned".

Elaborating on Frank's question:

Q1. Where do you draw the line between "seasoned" and "excessive"?

Q2. Do you do some sort of partial cleaning ritual that keeps the crud under control but leaves it in a state that you like to work with?

I'm going to break my own rule and make a comment here before Harry has a chance to answer, since this is regarding something I wrote on the website.

I discuss washing inside and out with warm, soapy water as a periodic maintenance item. Weber recommends it as annual maintenance in the owner's manual. I should add a statement talking about "seasoning" and that washing the inside is completely optional.

Having said that, I am of the opinion that for backyard barbecue there is no harm in doing this. With my WSM, I have found that the lid continually sheds it's seasoning for some reason and I end up washing it every couple of cooks, but with just cold tap water--soap is not even needed. I also notice that the top several inches of the middle section loses its seasoning, too, and I just brush away that loose material. The remainder of the middle section says well-seasoned, and there's no seasoning in the bowl that I can tell...but I never wash it, either, just brush it out.

Going back and reading what I just wrote, I may need to go back and re-write that part of the cleanup article.

Regards,
Chris

Hey now. Don't be breaking the rules. That's not cool.

My approach is as follows:

I never wash my WSMs ever. I only wipe the outside. I use wire brushes to scrape the insides, inside of door, and dome after each cook and reline the foil. For the grates, I put them in trash bag and then spray them with oven cleaner (use gloves please), and rinse them off. The way to tell a properly seasoned pit is to smell it. If it smells good, imagine how your meat will smell and taste if the pit already smells good before you start cooking. Again, you can do what you want but my strong recommendation is to NEVER wash your insides! Scraping will get all the gunk off. I use the $1.00 BBQ brushes on sale from the 99 cent store and discard them when they are clogged.
Also read my other posts about other no-no's for your competition WSMs: fish, hot dogs, lamb, hamburgers. If you don't use them for comps, you can ignore my advice.
Just my $0.02.