The Complete Guide
Custom Made Kettle BBQ Covers — The Australian Owner's Complete Guide
A kettle BBQ is one of the most popular backyard cooking setups in Australia — and one of the harder items to find a well-fitting cover for. This guide explains how to measure your kettle and what to look for in a cover that will actually protect it.
Why standard kettle covers never seem to fit
The problem with off-the-shelf kettle covers is that they are sold in very few sizes to cover a wide range of kettle diameters. A cover labelled for a 57 cm kettle is usually made to fit anything from about 52 cm to 60 cm, which means it fits some kettles well and others poorly.
Round shapes are less forgiving than rectangular ones when it comes to sizing. A rectangular cover that is a few centimetres too wide just looks a little baggy. A round cover that is a few centimetres too large will not sit on the kettle properly at all. It either sits up high on the lid, leaving the bowl exposed at the bottom, or it sits with visible bunching around the circumference. Either way it does not stay put in any kind of wind.
A cover made to your exact diameter fits cleanly over the kettle and sits at the right height without any of that.
How to measure a kettle BBQ
Kettle BBQs only need two measurements because they are radially symmetric. Once you have the diameter and the total height, a round cover can be made to fit properly.
Diameter
Diameter is the straight-line measurement across the widest point of the kettle body. On most kettle BBQs, the widest point is the bowl — the lower rounded section that holds the charcoal grate and cooking grate. The lid is slightly narrower than the bowl on most models.
Hold the tape measure straight across the outside of the bowl at its widest point. Do not measure around the outside curve of the bowl. You want a straight line across, from one side of the kettle body to the other.
Do not include side tables, ash catchers, or any accessory that attaches to the side of the kettle. Measure the round body of the kettle only.
Height
Height is the full height of the unit from the bottom of the leg feet on the ground to the top of the lid handle or knob in the fully closed position. The cover goes over the entire kettle including the legs, so you need the total height from the floor up.
If your kettle is sitting on a patio or deck, measure from the surface it is sitting on rather than trying to account for any slope or unevenness.
Why material quality matters for a round cover
Round BBQ covers deal with a specific issue that flat-sided covers do not. Because the cover sits in a dome shape over the kettle lid, any waterproof coating on the underside has to flex at the crown of the cover every time it is put on and taken off. A rigid coating cracks along those flex lines fairly quickly. A flexible coating handles repeated use without breaking down.
The underside of every cover we make uses a polyurethane waterproof coating, which stays flexible across a wide temperature range and does not crack at flex points the way PVC or cheaper coatings do. The face fabric is 200gsm solution-dyed polyester. Solution-dyed means the UV protection runs through every fibre rather than being applied as a surface treatment. Surface treatments wear off. Solution-dyed fabric retains its UV resistance for the life of the fabric.
At 200gsm, the fabric is stiff enough to hold a reasonable shape over the kettle dome and not just collapse inward. It also feels solid when you handle it, which is usually the fastest way to tell a good outdoor fabric from a cheap one.
Caring for your kettle BBQ cover
Rinse the outside with a garden hose every month or two, particularly through the warmer months when dust, pollen, and cooking residue settle more quickly. Shake out the cover before putting it on each time to avoid trapping any grit between the cover and the kettle surface.
Always wait until the kettle is completely cold before covering it. After a standard charcoal cook, give it at least an hour. The inside of a kettle stays hot well after the lid has cooled enough to touch on the outside. A cover put on too early traps heat and moisture inside, which promotes rust on the bowl and grates.
Store the cover in a shaded spot when it is not in use rather than leaving it folded in direct sun. UV degrades outdoor fabrics slowly even when the fabric is folded.