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When I saw this I thought, @amusedtodeath has forgotten that I live in the UK. Why would I want to order a grill from the US with all the extra shipping and tax costs? Why indeed? Of course I could not resist going onto the korin site. Even with a hefty delivery charge and estimated UK tax of about 22%, buying a large konro from the US works out £100 cheaper than buying one here. Wow. I called up the korin folk and they say that the ETA for out of stock items is for customers with back orders and that new orders may not be fulfilled until the winter. I am willing to take a chance on that but I am still waiting on news of a refund from my non-responsive supplier here (they are based in the Netherlands). If that gets sorted I will be straight onto korin. Thanks for the tip, I think. No more shopping after this. Although your binchotan is so much cheaper than ours that I might sneak a little bit into my shipment. I really should stop reading stuff on this forum!

Astute eye! They were made by the blacksmiths down in the Amana Colonies as part of a Churrasco setup. They did several other pieces for me over the years - a custom pot rack for my kitchen remodel, and the BBQ table on my deck.

OK, tonight's dinner, being totally confessional, is Leftover Kabobs. I had about half of a previously grilled tri-tip in the fridge that I was desperately trying to think of how to use it up? The muses came to me and said "kabobs!" So, I cut it up into chunks, seasoned the cuts sides with a blend of Dizzy Pig IPA and Sucklebusters Hoochie Mama, then onto one skewer. Some yellow onion and brown mushrooms on the other skewers, slathered with garlic olive oil and Sucklebusters SPG (salt, pepper, garlic) and a dash of purple crack (because!) Grilled direct, at 375F, for about 25 minutes on the lower grate. Done, on a platter of rice pilaf. Plated with a nice Pinot Noir.

Yes, we are quite the enablers on here! Between toys/gadgets, rubs/sauces, charcoal, etc., I've spent quite a bit of coin because of you people! And, I've been the instigator in several of these mass shopping sprees myself, so a big mea culpa there!!

It's funny you put it that way as I have a similar story. I've probably told this before but I'll tell it again. Chapter 1: The mythical Konro grill. A few years ago I wanted a Yakitori grill and found Konro's on the Korin website but they were on backorder. I'll wait it out. How long can they stay on backorder anyway? Well I kept checking and checking. Two years later they were still on backorder. At this point I figured Konro's were just some mythical grill, only seen in videos but never available. I gave up, put them out of my mind and bought a cheapie Yakitori grill. I was relatively happy in my grilling life. Charter 2: Japanese knife obsession. This February I got on the idea of finding a perfectly sized and shaped Japanese knife for me. I looked around and just couldn't find what I was looking for. I started looking in every website that sells Japanese knives. I ended up back on the Korin website. They didn't have my perfect knife but while there I figured I would daydream some more about that mythical Konro grill. A few clicks later and Wow! The web page has changed. Seems like they are about to come off of backorder. Could this be real? I slapped my face and rubbed my eyes. Yea I'm awake. It seems to good to be true. A quick conversation with Mrs skreef and a LG Konro was ordered. A month and a half wait and the Konro was sitting on my porch. The end to a 3 year odyssey Final Chapter: Who's fault is it anyway. There's a friend on Guru named Ben. He makes custom Japanese knife handles. I was encouraging him along as he started his custom knife handle adventure. In turn he really got me hooked on Japanese knives. From that, the obsession to find my perfect Japanese knife was born. It was that obsession that got me back on the Korin website, which led me to order the mythical Konro grill. So there you have it. We're blaming this all on Ben - LOL The End - Happy Yakitori

OMG, this is all your fault anyway!!! I've looked at those grills for years and had nearly forgotten them until you brought them up! Just when I thought I was out, you dragged me back in!!! Wtf, we may as well have fun with it... For F***'s sake, I'm going to resist buying a wfo, so Charlane doesn't leave me...!

Good Yakirtori is hard to come by outside Japan. Are u two or three venturists opening a establishment soon.

Wakarimasu, Anjin-san!

Yeah! it’s all Bens fault, man those Japanese knife handle makers are real trouble makers! Be careful Charles he might even make you a knife handle. Oh wait I think he already has

Hey what are friends for anyway Just wait until fall when I really have my act together and have you and Charlane over for pizza with Konro appetizers. We'll see how long you resist a WFO after that - LOL

@tony b as you know I have one of those cheapie grills like yours. Nothing wrong with those just a tad small for me (I'm a Yakitori space hog).

That about settles it, you even speak Japanese. I watched Shogun but, the words aren't familiar.

Now you all have gone and done it. Need to order some Sumi and Aramaru to compare it to Marabu.

I like this thread. I'll look forward to your thoughts on that charcoal. I ordered some of the same(the white binchotan was way out of my price range) to try, but they won't be shipping that to me until they fulfill the whole order including the grill. I've been using Rockwood and Fogo Premium and a precious little bit of Dennis' Coco char since I got my KK. The flavor of my food has benefited from the switch from mass market char.

My friend on Guru ordered a LG from Korin about a month ago. His arrived two days ago. They are definitely filling orders as the containers come in. Korin is a pretty kewl company. You don't have to worry. When it comes in they'll ship it out and send a notification. It'll arrive a few days later. There's a few other items from Korin. One being a really sm round grill that I could put one piece of glowing lump in to keep a bottle of sake warm. I love hot shots of sake.

As a previous owner of one of these (affectionately called the Piece of Sh!t Kamado (POSK) by most previous owners), I can attest that most repairs are just temporary. When the top hat vent on mine cracked to the point I thought it was going to split in half and there was significant cracking around the bolts in the neck where the spider nut holds the top hat, I knew it was time to upgrade. I bought a "real" kamado from Dennis and gave away my POSK to a buddy for helping me move the KK onto my deck. About 2 months later, the entire top assembly (neck and top hat) fell off when he opened the lid to start a cook. He did some minor repairs on it and kept it on life support for a few more months. Hopefully you can keep this one going for one BBQ season to learn kamado style cooking (or Kooking, as RJ would put it - LOL!). Learning vent/air control will carry over to any other kamado style grill.

If you lived closer I would have definitely used your help. Appreciate the thought.

Well, well, well ain't that a bonafide looking meal. Those skewers look like the local blacksmith turned em. Good show.

While not jumping on the bandwagon to get a grill from Korin, I did order some of their charcoal (5# bags of Sumi and Aramaru), along with some wine glasses (sounded like a nice deal @ $3.99 each). They had some very nice looking knives, but a tad out of my price range for most of them! Will try and do some side-by-side cooks in my cheapo yakitori grill (https://smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B003601SRA) with their charcoal and cocochar for comparison.

I've got a medium backordered through Kirin, expected arrival is "summer"... You can get a large sooner, "early June". Sorry, @tekobo, I meant Korin... In case you were going to look. I'm pretty sure this is the mothership for konro grills.

I wish I lived closer I wouldn’t mind giving you a hand this looks like a fun project

Glad to see everyone is enjoying this thread. Very exciting times.

Wow what a day but I got er done. I started by removing my test stones and running some string lines to square everything up properly. I first removed the grass layer. That's the hardest part of the dirt digging. Leveled it off and added another string line to mark the footer section. Dug my 4" footer slab and added rebarb holding it up with stone pieces. Poured the concrete using my new cement mixer "toy". Worth every penny of the $300 I spent on it. Here is Mrs skreef working the cement. By this time I was pooped out and grateful for the help. Here it is. Me and Mrs skreef didn't write our name in the cement but fat cat had to get in on the action. Really excited about this progress. In a couple of days I can start building my stand.

I had a similar problem with my second pizza cook. I had got so used to being able to use a basket for more than one cook that I had underestimated the coal needed to get up to temp for a pizza. Having recognised this part way through the cook, I took out the grates, added more coal and all was well. I had read some advice from @ckreef before about max three turns to start and then down to two and that works for me. Using that method I haven't been in danger of running out of coal on an individual cook (just so long as I fill up at the start of the cook!). It is the best fun experimenting with pizzas on the KK. My recent learning is to remember to use my drug dealer scales to measure out the very small amounts of yeast required for some recipes. I was using old fresh yeast for one cook and overcompensated just a little bit too much with my yeast weight AND didn't use my small scales to measure it out. The resulting pouffy dough balls soon collapsed in on themselves when I tried to shape them. Still tasty though. Cheese, pig products and bread, what's not to like??