you don't need a chimney to light your coals

Kingsford with chimney.

Yeah tried Royal oak and a few other brands but they don't last as long in the smoker.  Weber brand charcoal was the longest lasting one I ever tried but it has been discontinued.  So back to the Kingsford.

I use a Kamado Joe Classic II (though that isn't important here). The only charcoal I can get locally seems be either Royal Oak or Cowboy and between the two I prefer Royal Oak by far but it is sometimes sketchy itself. I really don't like Cowboy. But I do like Atlanta Grilling Company's product but I have to have it shipped from Georgia and so I wait for specials (especially on shipping) and buy in bulk.

Jealous devil chunx charcoal


From Home Depot.


No briquettes for kamado

Just plain old Kingsford here.

found significant lack of quality control with the various brands of lump charcoal, too often bags were becoming entirely filled with tiny pieces (so small they immediately fall though the grates) and overwhelming amounts of dust

have gone back to using Kingsford, but not a fan of the ridges on the briquettes; the ridges are only advantage to the manufacturers selling more charcoal

Best bang for the buck I have tried

https://www.academy.com/p/b-b-charcoal-co-20-lb-bnb-lump-charcoal


Frontier from Sam's club is probably the worse I have ever used. But I will say, it was good for short quick cooks like burgers or Steaks or prok tenderloin.  But besides that for a long cook, total trash

Big Green Egg brand is fine, but expensive for the price

Royal Oak is every hit more miss, no telling what you will find it & what kind of trash

Cowboy Lump is good / ok for the price

Jealous Devil is GREAT for long cooks, lots of big peices!! But not great for the short cook. And it is Expensive!

Cowboy Lump

I've been using the Green Egg brand lump charcoal and have gotten better consistency than all of the other brands I've tried.  Lights fairly fast using a propane torch and gets as hot as I need it.

Yes, it costs a bit more, but is worth it.

Kingsford, for the consistency.

If you’re buying BGE charcoal, buy Royal Oak. They make big green egg charcoal. Same plant different bag. Cheaper

same.  I could see the use if you had a need to cook hotter.  My 22" WSM doesnt really run hot, especially if it's windy.  mine likes to hover around 235 with the bottom vents like baaaarely open.

The competition guy, Harry So I think, has won a bunch of comps with KF Blue.  I haven't mastered many cooks but my pulled pork gets a lot of, "holy shit you should be bagging and selling this stuff."

Kingsford blue bag and Cowboy brand Lump mixed together. Works for me.

Tried Royal Oak and it didn't burn right.  Possible that it was exposed to moisture, but it
just didn't hold high temps.

Short grilling, I use Royal Oak or Cowboy, whatever I grab. All lump charcoal has the same quality "issues", but it is the best for anything for grilling still.

Long barbeque, Kingsford plain.

Most briquettes contain:

-Wood char (charcoal fines)
-mineral char (anthracite coal fly ash)
-limestone
-starch
-borax
-water

...and can contain sodium nitrate, sawdust, and petroleum.

The nastiest thing on that list is the anthracite.  It's coal, and coal contains all kinds of crap, including sulfur, which is why you don't cook with it.  The fly ash is basically free from power plants, so they can get some free BTU's from it with the coal that didn't burn.  The EPA banned coal fly ash ponds, so they have to do something with this waste.

Also on that list a bunch of stuff that doesn't burn.......limestone being the worst.  They say it's so when you when to start cooking because it turns white.  You can't just hold a hand over to feel the heat?  That filler (with the ash in the coal fly ash) plus all the binders and water weigh the bag down on a product you're paying for by weight.  Briquettes produce a ridiculous amount of ash compared to lump because of all these fillers and binders that don't burn.

The worst part is they can still put "all natural" on the bag because all of this stuff is, in fact, all natural.  They don't all collide and get smooshed together naturally, but they can still put it on the bag.  There are new ones that say "Professional", "competition", "hardwood" or "lump" briquettes, "long lasting", etc.  Makes you wander what's in the normal one that makes these (allegedly) so much better.  But don't buy into the marketing.  Measure the ash content--what you start with on weight vs what you end with.   Good lump charcoal should be less than 5%.  Briquettes can be upwards of 40%.  This is how/why they are so cheap.  Limestone, water, and ash are heavier than carbon.

Weber had a company making briquettes years ago that were nothing but pulverized hardwood lump charcoal and a starch binder.  The BTU/# was nearly as high as good lump charcoal, very little ash.  They were great, but they were just as expensive as lump because you had to manufacture lump, and then manufacture briquettes.  They only lasted a few years because the public looked at them and ask why you would pay 2x-3x for a briquette.  I wished they would have better marketed them by using their reach to expose the briquette industry, but that would have pissed off the company that was producing the briquettes for them.

TL;DR:  Briquettes are full of industrial waste and fillers.......use lump.

Fun fact: that's why Henry Ford popularized briquettes--to get rid of the waste of the Model T assembly line.  He didn't invent them like people say, the Zwoyer patent on briquetting goes back to the late 1800s.  E.G. Kingsford was a family member of Henry in the U.P. Michigan and was instrumental in securing the land, mills, and eventually the charcoal plant in the town of Kingsford, MI.  So when "Ford Charcoal" was spun off in the 50's, they named it after him.

The Good Charcoal Company

Royal Oak lump for short cooks - steaks, chops, pork loins, spatchcock chicken.

Anything involving smoke and low and slow I use Kamado Joe Big Block.

Tried Cowboy and didn't like the flavor or results.  Too much junk in some bags.

This might be useful: Lump Charcoal Database

Webber grill, Kingsford, still the best way to do a ribeye!

Jealous Devil has the most big chunks and least suspicious “stuff” in it, in my experience.

Royal Oak can be good, but is highly variable.  I’ve had great batches, and others with fiberglass (? Looked like it), and board ends with bolts in them.

What is the obsession with big chunks?  If they're big, that because they still have wood fiber holding them together.  If they have wood fiber, that means they still have water and volatiles in them, and that means smoke, ash, and lower BTU/# on a product you're paying for by weight.

Proper carbonization is what you want......80-85%+.  If you can't break it apart by hand, it's not 80%+ and you're paying for water.

BTU/# is BTU/#, it doesn't matter what size the piece is.......it all burns the same.  One pound of 85% carbon burns at the same rate no matter what size it is if you are in control of the O2 getting to it.  If little pieces burned at a faster rate, you would see a higher temp as a result--Law of Conservation of Energy.  You want a good mix of sizes if the best way to get a fire lit and keep it lit.  Little pieces act as a "fire bridge" transferring the heat from one piece to the next, and if they are properly kilned, you don't have to worry about ash clogging the fire.  The huge chunks can act as a heat sink, especially if they're not kilned to a high enough carbonization......the moisture content sucks up the heat, and the extra ash content can clog the fire.  

"Big chunks!" is a marketing scam to sell you under-carbonized charcoal......wood fiber and water are heavier than carbon.  It takes less time, is cheaper to manufacturer, and weighs the bag down.  Don't fall for it.

Next we can talk about how it's cheaper to bring the imported stuff in from 5000+ miles away for less than the charcoal that is made a couple hundred miles away from you in the US.  You'll never buy another bag of the South American crap after you read about it.

Big chunks burn longer than little chunks at the same level of carbonization (surface area? If you have an argument that this is not so, I’d like to hear it - it at least seems to be true, though I can’t claim to have specifically measured it).  A lot of charcoal you buy looks like chips and powder, and is gone in a couple of hours.  I cook a brisket for 24 hours - I don’t want to have to stop my cooking process to add fuel.  Also, tiny chips and powder fall through my grate into the ash bin. If size of the lumps isn’t a factor, now about density? Harder/denser woods would produce denser charcoal that is less likely to crumble and would burn slower, wouldn’t it?

Even worse, Royal Oak has a greater chance of having bolts and board ends in it, which is an even bigger factor.  My “South American crap” has never produced scraps of fiberglass or bolts.

ETA

I thought about this a little more-

1. Powder and chips that fall through the grate lower the efficiency of the burn and just plain suck.

2. In the absence of other factors, equal mass should produce equal BTUs - that’s just physics. But do the smaller chunks burn faster/hotter?

If carbon access is the determining factor, smaller would have more surface area.

If air access is the determining factor, a mass of bigger chunks would have more airflow, since a mass of chips would restrict airflow.  Does the increased surface area even this out?  I don’t know.

For a slow smoke, it seems like controlling airflow is the biggest factor.  Better airflow through your fire (seemingly) would give more control via the vents.

Lol, maybe it’s a wash. Control your airflow and it doesn’t matter (?).

Heat gun works for me.

And...chunks of apple and maple work for me too.
I used maybe 30 briquets of Kingsford in the past year, used to put about four of them under the wood before lighting the grill.

In recent months I've just been using wood and snuffing out my Smokey Joe by closing the vents. The leftover wood is partly charcoal, starts glowing in seconds when I put the heat gun to it.

I think you're going to like this.....

The surface area is a common misconception because folks don't realize that nearly all of the surface area is not visible.  Lump that's carbonized to 80%+ can have a surface area (AKA porosity) of 200-300 m2/g.  That means a piece of charcoal the size of a golf ball splayed out has the surface area the size of a tennis court.  It absolutely crazy how porous it is!!  So it doesn't matter what you're seeing on the outside, the oxygen is going inside of it.  I'll try to most a pic of what charcoal looks like under a microscope.  That's why charcoal is used in filters, detoxifiers, soil amendments, etc.  When they activate charcoals with super high temp steam and/or chemicals, the porosity can be as high as 2000 m2/g.....that's the medical grade stuff they give patients that overdose or are poisoned (usually a bismuth or anthracite coal for those though......we carried it on the ambulance.)

Back to the BBQ, when you see those glowing red, nearly translucent coals in the firebox, fireplace, or wood stove, that's the true charcoal that's nearly all carbon at that point.  100% of it is burning--inside and out--tons of heat.  It's not like a log, briquette, etc that has to burned from the outside in.  With those, you have to burn through all the other "stuff" to get to the carbon.

A piece of "green" wood can have a moisture content equal to or over the weight of the wood itself and many months of seasoning brings it down to under 20%.  That's getting most of the water, tars and liquors out of it.  When you start burning it, you'll see the blue flames which is the rest of those volatiles be burned out of it (that's where the creosote comes from).  Then the wood fiber starts to burn.....that's where the yellow flames (that's where most of the ash come from.)  Finally, when that log breaks apart into a bunch of glowing red coals, that's the carbon--that's when the fire is starved from O2 in the charcoal making process.  If done right, it results in a lump charcoal that is close to 12000 BTU/#.  It produces very little smoke or ash because the things that produce smoke are ash are already gone.  It can burn hot and fast or low and slow--just depends how much O2 you let get to it.  It also can get wet, and dry quickly because it adsorbs (not absorbs) moisture.  That's why the cave man invented it--it was a lightweight, transportable fuel he could get wet yet still have a hot fire in short amount of time.  Fun fact: Lump charcoal is the oldest manufactured product known to man.  

Most US manufactured charcoals come from "slabs" which are all the offcuts and scrap from the milling industry.  A tree that has had an injury from someone nailing something into it, shooting it, wrapping barbed wire around it, etc, will have a knot or deformity thus causing that piece to get rejected at the mill.  It goes to the charcoal plant with all the other pieces that are too knotty, warped, short, etc to be made into hardwood lumber.  A piece with a nail, bullet, or whatever in it may make it through a kiln with that still in there, too heavy to be grabbed by a magnet, which you don't find until the charcoal burns away.  There were some brands using "construction scrap" and you should stay away from that junk if you see plywood, molding, subfloor, etc because of the glues and such (the crappy thing was they still called these "all natural" because resin come from trees.)  But a couple right angles on a piece of charcoal in the bag doesn't mean construction scrap, a 2x4, or anything bad.  It's mill scrap, which makes awesome charcoal because it's most likely virgin white or red Oak, Hickory, Maple, Cherry, etc from the Mark Twain and Ozark National Forests.  This is what you use to smoke anyway.

South and Central American charcoals come from very dense woods you cannot pronounce--from species similar to cashew and walnuts.  Very bitter woods, super dense, thus hard to kiln.  Despite what they claim, these countries do not have the rules that the US does about harvesting, labor, nor emissions.  They can clear cut the rainforest, use slave labor to do it, and pump as much particulate into the atmosphere as they want.  That's how they can bring it 5000 miles into the US for basically the cost of freight--far less than what a US manufacture will spend to produce and comply here.  That story is for another day though.

Lastly, yes, you don't want a ton of "fines" (1" minus), because it will choke the airflow.  The dust or small pieces that fall into an ash pan will burn on hotter cooks so you don't necessarily lose those BTU's.  On the other side, if you trying to get a piece of charcoal the size of a cantalope lit--first, it's probably full of water and wood fiber and that's why it's still that big (so you're spending time and BTUs [$] to complete the kilning process that the manufacturer should have done!)  Second, with a low and slow fire use a very small amount of charcoal is actually burning depending on the smoker.  A big chunk like that is acting as a heat sink, so getting a small portion of it to burn is tough when the rest of it is radiating heat is tougher than a couple smaller pieces burning.  Plus the neighboring huge chunk might be too far away for the heat to get to ignite it--that's where the little piece come in.  Faster lighting, and providing a "fire bridge".

The third part of the fire triangle is heat, better known as a kindling temp.  Lump charcoal is about 670F.  So the area that's burning is can be very small to result in a temp of 200F-something in the cooking chamber.  If you're using a BGE or kamado type cooker, that's why things goes "nuclear" when the dome temp hits about 450F or so......down in the firebox, it just hit about 700F and ALL the charcoal lit through "flashover".  That's why that temp needle will wrap all the way around in less than a minute.  Otherwise you're using the draft door and/or chimney to starve the fire of O2--it will burn out-of-control since their nothing else holding it back.

Hope this makes sense......wrote a lot more than I planned to, but science behind fire fascinates me.

EDIT:

Here ya go.....normally all these crannies are clogged with water, tars, and liquors.  The kilning process burns those out and leaves behind a very porous piece of carbon that the O2 can flow through.

This (above) is what makes this place so great.

Kamado Joe big chunk is my current favorite
I too have found building material in Royal Oaks

I tried a bag of something called "world's best" lump charcoal. Their substrate was apparently gathered from a new subdivision. There was no natural wood in the bag

Jealous devil

Are you a fire scientist by chance? Great info, I learned something today.

In terms of something like a Weber, for regular grilling (450+) what is the most efficient way to light it? I use a chimney, but obviously you're burning off a decent amount of charcoal before you dump it. I've always though it was worth the coals being ready in 5 minutes, but maybe not??

For BBQ, I generally place a firestarter on one side, it seems with the vents wide open it'll burn naturally in 6ish hours around 250.

Great post!

My experiences is that there is too much variability within most of the brands to make a determination.  I've used Royal Oak, Cowboy, whatever that green bag is, bulk buys from Restaurant Depot, . . .

I've never used the Kamado Joe Big Block, or the other guchi names.  

I wind up opening each bag, tossing the good chunks in bins like these, and tossing the junk. Fines get burnt in the firepit.  I can usually fit 3 bags of good fuel into two of those bins, with maybe half a bag of waste & fines.

A bit of messy work up front, but it beats being half way through a cook at midnight and realizing that the rest of your fuel is junk.

Good to know.

Haha, no, I have a degree in aerodynamic engineering from 20 yrs ago, but other than that, I just know a lot about charcoal.

Chimney works great, and you really don't burn that much off if you're not waiting for the charcoal to "ash over".  Don't wait for that--that's a briquette thing.  Briquette companies CLAIM they add limestone for that purpose, but there's limestone in 100% of the briquette, not just the outside......besides, I know when to cook on it, WHEN IT'S HOT!!  I digress, soon as you see red and feel the heat, dump it, and then throw some more lump on top.  Remember, a chimney full of lump is a LOT less by weight than briquettes.  You're not losing any money, because [by weight] you're using less in the long run.

I prefer a weed burner (or the new "grill gun" if you want more of the fun factor.)  You just need to get the charcoal up to 670F.  Heat guns and coils also work, but I don't like having to plug them in.

Sidenote: a lot of people on the BBQ forums and GD rave about their MAPP torch.  MAPP hasn't been made in 15 yrs--the stuff in the yellow bottle has been MAP-Pro for more than a decade.  MAPP burned at 5300F.....Propane is 3600F and MAP-Pro is like 3700-something.  Don't waste the extra money for another 150F since you're not adding O2 and welding with it!!!  In any case, since you only need 670F to ignite charcoal, so hold it back and use a wide flame.  Putting a 3600F blue flame on something that has moisture in it is a good way to get an ember in your eye or light your deck or garage on fire.

FOGO super premium is all I use for BGE.

I usually wait until a couple flames poke out the top and call it good. The short light-up time alone will keep me using lump.

chimney on top of your turkey fryer burner has you a chimney full of hor coals in 5-10 minutes, tops. Doesn't matter what kind of charcoal, unless it's wet. then it's 15 minutes.
you do have a turkey fryer, don't you?

I usually just light my charcoal with wax wood bundles, but sometimes use my heat gun, if the extension cord is handy.

This

The charcoal nerds up in here are hurting my delicate brain.

You got the Kingsford edge?

Charcoal nerd......yup.  Former career......helicopter pilot & mechanic.

So, judging off your username and avatar, maybe one day you can be a charcoal nerd too!  The helicopter world is lonely and boring, so don't worry, you'll find something to nerd out about.  Hahaha.

Regular Kingsford
Because home depot used to run a sale Memorial day and 4th of July, 2-18# for $10.
I stocked up a few years ago and I'm running a little low. It probably won't get that low again sadly.

Not trying to be a smart ass, but do you also load up on cheap Bar-S hotdogs that weekend and eat nothing else for the rest of the year?

Just like hotdogs, they can make and sell those things so cheap for a reason, they're full of fillers.  You're not saving money on "charcoal" briquettes, you're overpaying for water, limestone, coal fly ash, etc.  They're not going to lose money on these.

Nope. That's perishable.
You see charcoal can last if kept out of the weather.

Let me guess, if toilet paper is 1/2 price, you only buy a 4 pack.

I think you're missing the point I was trying to make.  So to stay on the toilet paper analogy, the answer depends on the quality of the product.  If you show up to the store and it's 1-ply and/or smaller rolls, then NO, that's not a deal.  You're getting junk and/or less of the product.  So it's "half-off" what?  It's not apples to apples.  I'm not going to be happy eating hot dogs just because I got them on sale (when I really wanted a ribeye that happened to be $25/#.)

In the case of the briquettes, you're getting a bag with a ton of limestone, coal fly ash, water, and other fillers in it.  The BTU/# is considerably lower than lump charcoal......so lump charcoal is not necessarily more expensive even with the briquettes are on super sale because of the amount of BTU's in the bag.  Look at the physical size of two 16# bags of briquettes vs one 17.6 or 20# bag of lump--they're almost the same because carbon is so much lighter than water and limestone.

If that's what you're happy with and you're going to use anyway, then go for it......but it's not as much of "deal" as you may think it is.  But don't get turned off by the price of lump charcoal--you use so much less of it by weight because everything in the bag burns.

I used to use Humphrey hardwood charcoal, but it is no longer available locally.
I like Rockwood, but it has gone up quite a bit lately.
I have been getting Blues Hog lately.  It is priced about what Rockwood used to be.
Also, if you have a kamado, the lump gets snuffed out once closed up and can be reused if the carbon isn't burned out.
I can get a couple of cooks out of a full fill of lump.

I've used a bunch of different brands.

For grilling in the weber kettle - Hardwood lump, usually Cowboy.  

Royal Oak is so hit or miss...it used to be really good years ago, but lately it's more miss than hit and I rarely buy it.  Sometimes it's good stuff, other times it's just an entire bag of tiny shit or half of it isn't fully charred...plus I get more rocks and random other shit in Royal Oak than any other brand.  

For smoking in the WSM it depends...for faster cooks like chicken/brats/meat loaf I use lump because the temp isn't usually as critical.  For longer smokes, I use Kingsford because I buy it when it's on sale for memorial day and labor day.

You don't know what half off means?

used to say that something is being sold at half the original price. Peaches are half off today.

The cost at home depot for kingsford is normally close to $20.
A while ago, some holidays they had it at $10.
I am comparing Kingsford to Kingsford with same weight.  
I give a crap about your hot dogs, apples, ash and lime.

Lump Briquettes are awesome, I get it at Academy Sports. Can’t say enough good things about it, keep a minimum of 6 bags at all times. Cook on regular lump too but the briquettes are amazing.

What exactly is a "lump briquette"?  Sounds like a football bat or a soup sandwich.....

I assume it is to mean a briquette made with lump charcoal fines?  That's almost all of them otherwise they couldn't call them "charcoal briquettes".  Most of them contain anthracite coal fly ash and a bunch of other junk binders.......just depends on the brand and how cheap they want to sell it for.  The more hardwood charcoal in them, the more expensive they are going to be.  On a holiday weekend sale, better believe they dial up the limestone, fly ash, & water since they are cheaper and heavier than charcoal/carbon.

But in any case, they can call each of them "all natural" since limestone, anthracite, starch, etc are all in fact natural.  Weber had a good brand of charcoal briquettes years ago that was just crushed hardwood charcoal fines, some starch for a binder, and a borax coating to get it to release from the press.  They were the best performance of any briquette, but since they were at lump charcoal prices, everybody just bought lump charcoal.....they discontinued them.