Listen, grilling fans: while it may give you some satisfaction at the time, heading down to the hardware store with your credit card and buying the latest stainless steel, gas fired grill will not make you an expert barbecue cook any more than buying a Lamborghini will make you professional road racer. Stop and look around. Many people are finding that building brick homemade grills not only produces excellent results, but gives them more satisfaction than they could buy with a credit card.
For hundreds of years, our ancestors understood the value of common bricks in structures used for cooking. Aside from being fireproof, bricks both absorb and reflect heat, helping provide an even, hot fire and continuing the cooking process even when the embers start to cool. Brick homemade grills are no exception to the general rule, and can produce some of the best grilled food that you and your neighbors have ever eaten. Make no mistake, either; you will have neighbors whom you haven’t seen for months dropping in, once their noses catch the aroma emanating from your brick grill.
Builders of brick homemade grills need not be skilled masons, because the structures will not have to support any weight except for their own. The bricks can even be dry-stacked, meaning that no mortar is used to hold them together. I have seen dry-stacked Lord Rumford-style cooking fireplaces from the 19th century that are still standing and usable, even though the buildings that once enclosed them have turned to dust.
For those who value expertly mass-manufactured objects above those made with your own hands, we respect your viewpoint. Don’t waste your time trying to build brick homemade grills. For those who want to build their own stationary barbecues, realize that it is going to take some time, and that you will still have to shell out at least a few bucks for bricks and other components. As for plans, just do a careful search on the Internet. At least one do-it-yourself site even has a video that will take you through the process step by step, and you can refer back to it as many times as you want.