Oh dear, the enamel is gone

Small cracks in the enamel are more of a visual than a functional defect. The two spots in the picture were caused by the lid falling down several times. However, this was several years ago. And although the grill is often outside, it has suffered very little here.

Usually you notice it at some point when cleaning: the enamel on the kettle grill has chipped off. How could that happen? After all, you bought a premium model. And now this... Text by Markus Mizgalski

What is enamel?
Enamel is a fused glaze that can serve two purposes. On the one hand, it serves as a protective layer for metals, but on the other hand it can have a decorative character. This layer is made up of components that form glass and those that ensure adhesion to the base metal. Depending on its composition, enamel can have different colors and properties. It is applied using heat. The silicates contained in the enamel become an extremely hard glass, which then essentially forms the usually very robust coating. But what destroys this coating? The answer is quite simple: the same thing that can destroy any other glass - heat or mechanical force. Heat is an obvious choice; because the glaze is melted, it can also be liquefied again. Mechanical force is used when a hard object falls on the surface or the enamel itself falls on a hard surface. As a rule, however, the enamel only flakes off when the load is very high and very localized. Of course, the enamel itself can be faulty, for example unevenly thick or not completely opaque. The latter is usually noticed when assembling a grill and is corrected without hesitation by most manufacturers. Nevertheless, chipped enamel is not a big deal. There is a certain risk that water will run between the metal and the top layer and rust will form. But anyone who has invested 200 euros or more in a grill may still not like it when something like this happens. Especially not if the chipping occurred during normal use.

Grilling at 300 °C?
This inevitably leads to the question of what constitutes normal operation. To answer this question, it is actually worth taking a look at the operating instructions. Sometimes there are a few things that users should avoid. For example, manufacturers of gas grills with rear burners may recommend that all burners plus the rear burner should never be running at full load at the same time. Or that the warming rack should be removed when the rear burner is in use. This is understandable and there are good reasons for this. But what if such "safety instructions" lead to people wondering how a grill should be operated at all? In fact, some instructions for charcoal grills still contain instructions not to operate the grill at temperatures above 300 °C. And it is precisely because of this advice that manufacturers have refused to replace enamel parts under warranty in the past. Now we are asking ourselves how this is supposed to work. Of course, it is no problem to keep the circulating air temperature measured on the lid thermometer below 300 °C. But that doesn't apply to the charcoal grate. If you push glowing briquettes to the edge for indirect grilling, the temperatures there will definitely be much higher. For example, we measure a good 450 °C and more on the embers with standard briquettes. With our kettle grill, the outside of the sheet metal still reaches a good 260 °C when set up for indirect grilling. Mind you, we didn't turn the grill into a forge or use it as a steak machine. In this scenario, which is also typical for normal use, we reach temperatures of over 650 °C on the embers. On the sheet metal and thus on the enamel, we still measure almost 500 °C in the area of ​​the adjacent coals.