Burners are the heart of any gas grill, and if there’s a problem with them it can make it hard or impossible to grill great food on your Weber.

That’s why, just like a car, it’s important to give your grill periodic maintenance, so it can give you years of great meals and memories. Weber’s are incredibly durable, my own 14 year old Genesis is testament to that, but I use it a lot and I don’t think it would be in such great shape if I didn’t show it at least some love by cleaning it, especially the burners.

So, what exactly is a burner? Well, when you boil it down, the burners on Weber’s gas grills are basically hollow metal tubes with holes that flames come out of. There’s obviously more science behind it than that, but it helps to think of them in simple terms when it comes to cleaning them.

While you’re cooking all that great food on your grill all kinds of juices, grease, sauces, and marinades fall down onto the flavorizer bars and into the cookbox. The burners are pretty well protected, but over time they’ll begin to develop some surface corrosion on them.

For a while, all is well, but left untended the burner portholes will start to get clogged. This leads to uneven flame patterns, which means uneven heat on the grill.

Most grill owners have at least one brush among their grilling tools, but it’s actually important to have two of them. One for the cooking surfaces, and one just for the burners. You don’t want to transfer the grease and cooking residue from the cooking surface to your burners. For my own grill, I like to brush the burners about once a month.

It’s important to brush the burners across their surface, rather than lengthwise.

It’s also important to know when burners just need to have a good cleaning and when they need to be replaced. The burners in this photo are both in perfectly fine shape to work properly.

Only when burners are cracking, splitting apart or the portholes are so clogged they cannot be re-opened with a good cleaning should they be replaced. The burners on most Weber models carry a ten year warranty, so we expect them to last about that long, provided they are cleaned as needed.