An Athens Grill Master is Creating Luxury Grills for Home Chefs

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For Bobby Brennan, grilling in his backyard is akin to therapy. “My blood pressure generally goes down when I’m outside doing that. It’s how I unwind,” he says. It’s why the founder of Kamado Joe, which he exited in 2021, couldn’t stay away from the grill business for long. After a brief stint as a retiree, Brennan set his sights on a different type of grill—one that blends the artistry of live-fire cooking with the precision of an oven—and founded Emberhaus.

The fire ovens crafted by Emberhaus are designed, finished, and assembled in Athens, Georgia. The boxes are about 30 inches wide and weigh around 400 pounds. These are grills that invite homeowners to design kitchens around them—you won’t find an Emberhaus merely propped up on a deck.

Emberhaus Bobby Brennan Athens Georgia Grill Master — Image courtesy of Bobby Brennan

“I just felt there wasn’t really a charcoal grill with the aesthetic qualities for a luxury outdoor kitchen,” says Brennan. “There seemed to be about 10 or 12 gas grill brands that were successful at selling $10,000-plus gas grills into the luxury outdoor kitchen market, but nota charcoal equivalent.” While gas grills are certainly convenient, charcoal grills imbue an undeniable flavor. Brennan saw an opportunity to create a grill that delivers the charcoal experience with a polished look to match.

He drew inspiration from commercial charcoal grill companies, like Kopa and Josper, which craft grills for restaurants. He appreciated their industrial designs and how precise they were. But they could only be used inside and were meant to be used by professional chefs churning out the same menu items multiple times a night. “So I started with that kind of charcoal oven and I said, ‘What do I need to do to make it more consumer-friendly?’” recalls Brennan. He wanted to create something for the home chefs, like him, who take pleasure in cooking in their backyards but want a high-performance device.

Working with Align Machine Works, an engineering firm based in Athens, Brennan designed a grill-oven with a Scandinavian minimalist look that comes in a variety of colors (not just stainless steel). “If you look at outdoor kitchens, people are doing all sorts of elaborate, colorful countertops and cabinets, and I wanted to be the first grill company to offer multiple colors,” says Brennan. Some paints change colors when they get too hot, so Brennan uses paint by the Oregon-based company Cerakote, which can withstand up to 1,800 degrees. In the short time Emberhaus has been in business, the colors have been a draw for home cooks—in coastal regions, they’ve opted for blue, while Coloradan shave gravitated towards greens.

And while the fire ovens are sleek and modern, their real beauty may lie in the simple technology that fuels them. “You control the temperature by controlling the airflow in and out of the oven,” says Brennan. “The more air you allow through the base of the oven and out of the top, the hotter it’s going to get.” Temperature zones inside the oven allow the chef to cook more than one item at a time—a steak on one side, a cast-iron pan of vegetables on the other.

“There’s no Wi-Fi, there’s no automated electronic temperature control. It’s all manual,” says Brennan. That analog approach to grilling is part of the overall experience. “You buy a Ferrari because you want the experience of driving it, you want to feel the road,” he says. “We’re getting back to basics.”