Best way to clean SS grates


 
Bruno said:
No offense I think the chargon sucks!! If you aren’t using a brass Libman you are missing out.
I buy one every visit to smart and final, I would not want to ever be without these.
I started with the Weber long handle and once I found these I was hooked. View attachment 32357
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Bruno - Don't sugar coat it. Tell us how you really feel;-) That Libman doesn't seem to have a scraper?
 
Bruno said:
No offense I think the chargon sucks!! If you aren’t using a brass Libman you are missing out.
I buy one every visit to smart and final, I would not want to ever be without these.
I started with the Weber long handle and once I found these I was hooked. View attachment 32357
Click to expand...
No offense taken. Works better than any brush for me but to each his own.

But even if it was less effective i wouldn't go back to using a brush. I work in healthcare and I've seen firsthand what loose grill brush bristles can do to the human GI tract. It may be a smaller risk with a higher quality brush but the risk is still there.
 
Joe Anshien said:
Bruno - Don't sugar coat it. Tell us how you really feel;-) That Libman doesn't seem to have a scraper?
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It does have a scraper, I also feel like the brass would be more visible if a bristle came off, however after using these for years I have never seen a bristle come off. I get them for $9 and S&F so I swap them out often.
I’ll give my chargon another try I had high hopes when I bought it.
Those Libman’s are really great on CI grates. They’ve kept the 320 looking good for a long time.
 
I don’t do anything to the grates on the kettle since they’re hot enough before and after the cook to self clean and keep the kettle dry.
I brush the WSM grates with a nylon brush, spray them with Fume Free Easy Off, lay them in a 30 gallon trash bag for a day or two. I then clean them with the nylon brush in the utility sink, and then into the dishwasher.
 
Yep after YEARS of using Libman I have never once seen a bristle come off..........................ever. But I have seen Weber brushes and other brands lose serious numbers of them. Believe me if I saw so much as one bristle off a Libman brush I would never use a brush again
 
I find it amazing when I clean out some of my rehab grills and find hundreds, if not thousands of bristles in the layers of gunk in the grease pan.
 
Bob Bass said:
My grills and smoker only see crunched up aluminum foil as their cleaning tool.
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Used to do that. Where do you think the ground up aluminum bits go? Yep, right into your food where it then makes metal deposits in the brain. Buy GOOD (Libman) brushes or use a scraping device. No bristles inside my grills.
 
Well I’ll tell you what I just cleaned the crap out of a couple kettles and a stainless grate that looks brand new. Here’s what it took!
An hour of hard work!! I sprayed with citrusafe, used a stainless wire wheel brush in a drill, a chargon which I now have more respect for and the key was a pencil reamer we use to ream copper pipe. It got in all the nooks and crannies!
Burning both off at the moment, that was fun!!
 
For my two cents, I will say that I finally took Larry’s advice and bought a Libman. I got mine on Amazon before I found out that Menards carries a lot of Libman products including the brushes. I agree it is an excellent brush. I use it mostly to back up my wood scraper for my cast iron grates, but sometimes on stainless rods.

To me, the Chargon is still the way to go with stainless rods. (Sorry you don’t see it that way, Bruno 😄!) For GrillGrates, I personally prefer the wood scraper that quickly conforms to the sharp flat top shape of their design. For cast iron, as I mentioned, I kind of vacillate around. Where the cast iron is coated, I try hard to not damage it. That leads me in the direction of those textured pads. Weber sells packages of the pads that you use on a re-useable plastic handle. I have occasionally found throwaway pads with handles built in at the Dollar Store. I like that pads are soft and don’t scratch the cast iron coating but don’t like having to keep buying them and the limitations they have for thorough cleaning of baked on food residue.
 
Jon Tofte said:
For my two cents, I will say that I finally took Larry’s advice and bought a Libman. I got mine on Amazon before I found out that Menards carries a lot of Libman products including the brushes. I agree it is an excellent brush. I use it mostly to back up my wood scraper for my cast iron grates, but sometimes on stainless rods.

To me, the Chargon is still the way to go with stainless rods. (Sorry you don’t see it that way, Bruno 😄!) For GrillGrates, I personally prefer the wood scraper that quickly conforms to the sharp flat top shape of their design. For cast iron, as I mentioned, I kind of vacillate around. Where the cast iron is coated, I try hard to not damage it. That leads me in the direction of those textured pads. Weber sells packages of the pads that you use on a re-useable plastic handle. I have occasionally found throwaway pads with handles built in at the Dollar Store. I like that pads are soft and don’t scratch the cast iron coating but don’t like having to keep buying them and the limitations they have for thorough cleaning of baked on food residue.
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Hahah I had much better luck with the chargon today. Not sure why i had such a hard time with it the first go round.
 
Bruno said:
Well I’ll tell you what I just cleaned the crap out of a couple kettles and a stainless grate that looks brand new. Here’s what it took!
An hour of hard work!! I sprayed with citrusafe, used a stainless wire wheel brush in a drill, a chargon which I now have more respect for and the key was a pencil reamer we use to ream copper pipe. It got in all the nooks and crannies!
Burning both off at the moment, that was fun!!
Click to expand...
Can you post a picture of a "pencil reamer" please? Thanks
 
Bruno said:
Hahah I had much better luck with the chargon today. Not sure why i had such a hard time with it the first go round.
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There's definitely a bit of a learning curve with the chargon. The first couple of times I used it I thought it was way too slow to clean the grates one a time. Then I actually timed it and found it took me 60 to 90 seconds to clean my genesis grates. I quickly decided I can spare that amount of time....😆😆
 
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