Royal Oak vs. BGE lump

RRP

What you have been buying are bags that probably were handled by gorilla employees!  What I have learned to do is to shop where the bags are left on the pallets instead of handled and restacked. Then I pick up a bag and get a 6th sense if it feels full and solidly packed. If the bag is bottom heavy and the top is limp and seemingly empty at the top I don't take it! When I have a solid feeling bag I do this listening test next. Even if a bag feels solid I give it a shake and listen. Tiny pieces will shift making a "shifting" sound. Good solid pieces will have a tell-tale clink sound. Trust me - a little practice and you'll get the hang of it! 

littlerascal56

Royal Oak from HD has plenty of dust and pebbles, not to mention a LOT of rocks in it.  Works OK in the KJ with the small holes in fire grate, but it falls thru the 3/4" holes in my XL BGE.  I use " The Good One" in my XL, as it has a lot of large to medium pieces.  Keep the RO for low and slows in the KJ as it's pretty cheap when HD has it for $9.97 bag, but prefer the Good One for everything else at $20/bag.  RO is pretty smoky, but that's not always a bad thing, depending on what your cooking.  Amazed at the difference in lump between brands....night and day.

ElkhornHusker

I purchased some RO from Home Depot and found trash in the bag when I dumped it out.

littlerascal56

I will cut open a fresh bag of RO from Home Depot this weekend, and post a picture showing the junk and rocks.  I figure about 10% waste/per bag minimum.

feef706

littlerascal56 said:

I will cut open a fresh bag of RO from Home Depot this weekend, and post a picture showing the junk and rocks.  I figure about 10% waste/per bag minimum.

What size bags are these? I picked up two bags of RO from the BX here that were 8.8lbs I believe, <$7 each if I remember correctly, I don't recall finding any trash, but the pieces seemed very light, not dense at all. 

Begger

The Royal Oak sent to CA stores would seem to be small to medium pieces.   I'm even starting a collection of clay / unburnable stuff from RO bags.   When I get enough I'm sending it BACK.

I suspect the BGE from my ONE sample bag is a 'select' version of RO stuff.

Sardonicus

THIS is why they hate us!
Some poor guy in Argentina is reverse-searing his SRF filet mignon over cow chips and here we are discussing the merits of lump.
  

littlerascal56

Ok-picked up a fresh bag of RO at Home Depot. Cut it down the middle, and you can see it had some decent baseball sized pieces.  Took them off and rest of the bag was trash small pieces, rocks, and debris.  Won't buy any more from HD.

The picture of the lump in the tote is "The Good One" lump, which is mostly huge pieces of lump.

Mikee

A couple of months ago I got 2 bags of RO. Both were great. I had less than a cup of powder and chips. Just bought 2 more bags from a different dealer. I only opened one so far and had to sort it because the pieces were small. My guess is that 10% was unusable. Another 20% was very small and I'll use that as I can. Another 30% was small. 30% was medium sizes. That leaves only 10% for large.

I emailed RO and they replied that they screen their lump. I was starting to reply to them when I realized that it was not going to do any good. The bag I just recently opened may have been screened, but the screen was clogged.

When I bought those 2 bags of RO I also bought a bag of Laredo lump. The bag was smaller and seemed lighter in weight. I opened it up last night so I could hopefully get some medium pieces to go along with the small RO pieces. I dug into the bag and on top were very large pieces. I wasn't looking for extra large pieces and set them aside. As I dig further into this bad of Laredo, I'll find out what the bottom of bag contains.

While I do think RO overall gives a good value, you have to take into account that the bags you get will vary.