Weber Genesis EP-330 Premium Edition Gas Grill

Simply put the Weber Genesis line of grills are the best you can buy in this price range and beyond. The list price is $999USD but you can typically find it for around $850USD. What you get with the EP-330 is a three burner grill (available in five colors), a 12,000 BTU side burner, and a 10,000 BTU internally mounted sear burner. What makes this the Premium edition is the stainless steel cooking grates instead of porcelain coated cast iron and stainless steel vaporization bars.

For 2011 Weber has redesigned their popular line of Genesis grills. The burners, which used to run parallel to the front of the grill, with controls on the right side table, are now run perpendicular to the front of the grill with the controls in the front. Now, after 25 years, the Weber Genesis grill is much more like all the other grills on the market, at least as far as the burner design goes. Being Weber, this wasn't a rash decision and after three years of development, the new Genesis grill is a more efficient grill. I won't go into all the details here, but what I can say is that this grill really hasn't changed the way the grill cooks.

Of course, if you are reading this you are not interested in what the Genesis used to be, but what it is now. Put simply this grill is one of the most efficient standard gas grills on the market as well as one of the best built. For the price there really isn't a better grill on the market, and while this is a basic, no frills gas grill it does what you want, it grills hot and fast, while giving you the ability to do low, indirect grilling.

To really understand the Genesis grill you need to look inside the firebox. The three burners put out only 38,000 BTUs under 507 square inches of cooking space or about 75 BTUs per square inch. While this is low when compared to other gas grills, the efficient design holds in heat. Of course, without some serious power to get it up to temperature you will be waiting for this grill to get to temperature before you start grilling. The answer it would seem is to fire up the sear burner to heat up the grill faster. That might work is you don't need even heating because the sear burner really heats up the left side quickly, but not the right side. After a few cookouts, I'm sure you will get the right combination of burners to get the grill hot.

What really makes the Weber Genesis EP-330 stand out is its quality. The attention to detail that takes 3 years to change the burner design can be seen in every part of this grill. This means that everything on this grill works (they actually fire up every grill before it is packaged), and since there is a 10 year warranty on virtually everything in this grill you can rely on it to last for at least a decade and I would believe longer.

This model includes a 12,000 BTU side burner under a flush mounted cover on the right side table and a 10,000 BTU sear burner. This sear burner is simply an additional, standard burner built inside the firebox between the center and left burners. This boosts the heat output on this side of the grill giving you an intense heat for searing. The difference between the EP-330 and the E-330 is that the porcelain coated cast iron cooking grates have been replaced with stainless steel rod grates and the porcelain coated steel vaporization bars are now stainless steel.