OT /rockwoood in a weber kettle

tml1230

In 40 years of cooking on various and much loved webber kettles, i always used kingsford briquettes....

Then earlier this year, i stumbled on this website, and determined that many of you were cukoo for cocoa puffs for spending that amount of money for a  green egg shaped charcoal grill ...
Soon thereafter, i bought my first BGE ...and then my second BGE...never looked back and certainly NEVER  purchased another bag of briquettes.

Then u guys strong armed into trying "Rockwood " recently...now that is all i purchase.


Against that backdrop tomorrow i have to cook several meats with several different  cooking times and temps..
Since my  BGE MM will be cooking the "high value" meat, I will dusting off my weber kettle for about a 2-3 hour lower heat cook. I really don't know what to expect from the rockwood lump on the weber... i assume it will burn faster and harder than briquettes...any advice you can offer would be appreciated.

PS: i did a search on this site before asking  this question...but the most current response i could find was during bill clinton's presidency. Certainly BR  (before rockwood ).

i hope all of you and your families have a safe and wonderful Christmas!

PSS:Earlier today i read something here where  a person referred to EVOO...i had absolutely NO clue what that meant so...rather than appear ignorant and lazy, i searched it on the search function...would it have been SO difficult to say "olive oil"? just saying...

Hans61

What are you cooking in the Weber?

blasting

Nothing wrong with a weber kettle.  I have several and still use them fairly regularly.  There are certain things they do better than an egg, imo.

No reason to not burn RW in the kettles, imo.

Hans61

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gZmyJE1F5M8

Probably mostly refresher stuff here but I like the video

curious if the modern pitmaster from this video is on the forum 

SoCalTim

tml1230  there were a couple terms I had no idea what they meant and was too afraid to ask ... SWMBO - HDAF - FTC are just a couple, now ... all these years later, i still don't ask .. lol

Hans61

I don’t know hdaf 

Durangler

EVOO = Extra Virgin Olive Oil
SWMBO = She/Spouse Who Must Be Obeyed
HDAF = Heavy Duty Aluminum Foil
FTC = Foil Towel Cooler
WTF = Well That's Funny 

SamIAm2

@tml1230 -  a few years before I retired and before I knew of such a thing as RockWood, we had a morale luncheon held at the Beach House on KSC, which was where the astronauts stayed when they were preparing for a launch. It happened to be available so our management team set up the event - my boss was going to supply the protein and cook it with some of our help. He brought a Weber kettle, a couple bags of briquettes, and lighter fluid.

I was helping setup and happened to have a bag of BGE lump in my van that hadn't made it to my house so I emptied the kettle, loaded it, and fired up the lump with oil and paper towel. We cooked chicken pieces that he had marinated in Italian dressing and some steaks with just salt and pepper. People kept coming back where we were cooking wanting to know where that wonderful smell was coming from. Was good food that day.

Anyway, when we were getting done and starting to clean up, my coworker asked me what I was going to do with the lump still burning in the Weber. I took a water hose and put the fire out, dumped it into a heavy duty garbage bag, closed it, and turned the bag upside down to get as much water out as possible. Told her to take it home and let the bag sit in the sun for a couple of days till it dried out. A week later she told me she used it to cook on her Weber and wasn't going to use any thing else for BBQ. A month later she told me she had introduced several neighbors to lump charcoal and they had given up on briquettes. 

epcotisbest

BAH = big ass ham

nolaegghead

TL;DR  

Botch

SamIAm2 said:

Anyway, when we were getting done and starting to clean up, my coworker asked me what I was going to do with the lump still burning in the Weber. I took a water hose and put the fire out, dumped it into a heavy duty garbage bag, closed it, and turned the bag upside down to get as much water out as possible. Told her to take it home and let the bag sit in the sun for a couple of days till it dried out. 

My Dad built a 3" deep frame and stapled 1/4" wire mesh to the bottom, kept it on the gravel driveway, and always dumped his leftover/burning Kingsford briquets into it, poured a pail of water over them, and used them again the next Sunday.  Lit with genuine, 83-octane Texaco, of course!  

lousubcap

@Botch- Prolly a typo as I bet it was 93 Octane

tml1230

Durangler said:

EVOO = Extra Virgin Olive Oil
SWMBO = She/Spouse Who Must Be Obeyed
HDAF = Heavy Duty Aluminum Foil
FTC = Foil Towel Cooler
WTF = Well That's Funny 

Gee zzz... I thought WTF meant why the face?
samiam2...GREAT story! Point ell taken...
Hans and blasting-thanks for the input...
Nola...BFD

Focker

Personally, I have used lump in the Webers, but prefer briqs in them for a few reasons.  I would save the RW for your egg, and use Kingsford. 

With the leaky WSMs and kettles, you may have a hard time controlling temps.  Lump works great in a tightened up, air restricted egg.

Briqs don't burn as fast, or as hot, which is an advantage in everything minus a hells sear.  Much easier to maintain, even in challenging weather, which require more BTUs than normal.  Briqs also burn more evenly when spread out.

You will see this when lighting a chimney of lump.  Half is gone by the time it's completely lit.  A chimney of briqs stays gray, produces heat much longer.

tml1230

Thanks a bunch Focker, that helps . merry Christmas!

Focker

tml1230 said:

Thanks a bunch Focker, that helps . merry Christmas!

Same to you and yours! 

DMW

tml1230 said:

Durangler said:

EVOO = Extra Virgin Olive Oil
SWMBO = She/Spouse Who Must Be Obeyed
HDAF = Heavy Duty Aluminum Foil
FTC = Foil Towel Cooler
WTF = Well That's Funny 

Gee zzz... I thought WTF meant why the face?
samiam2...GREAT story! Point ell taken...
Hans and blasting-thanks for the input...
Nola...BFD

I'm a big fan of BFD. Bidirectional Forwarding Detection is a great way to detect path loss when neighbors are not directly attached to each other and also detected higher level loss of connectivity when physical link is still up.

bgebrent

AFD.  All Freaking Day long.  Bidirectional scares me.

YukonRon

Block Flow Diagrams; a fundamental task in designing sysems (macro and micro) in chemical engineering.

Durangler

DMW said:

I'm a big fan of BFD. Bidirectional Forwarding Detection is a great way to detect path loss when neighbors are not directly attached to each other and also detected higher level loss of connectivity when physical link is still up.

Huh? 
WTF you mean?
~laughs~

DMW

Durangler said:

DMW said:

I'm a big fan of BFD. Bidirectional Forwarding Detection is a great way to detect path loss when neighbors are not directly attached to each other and also detected higher level loss of connectivity when physical link is still up.

Huh? 
WTF you mean?
~laughs~

Sorry, here's more details, rather than retyping:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bidirectional_Forwarding_Detection

Killit_and_Grillit

As @focker said, Rockwood in a Weber burns faster than a Black Cat fuse being lit by a one armed gas pump attendant. (Paints a picture, doesn’t it)

Just toss some briqs in and be done with it)

Durangler

Thank you @DMW
I'm now informed, but retention may be an issue. 

Killit_and_Grillit

.

YukonRon

I can't remember what retention means...

SamIAm2

It's a pond Ron.

Botch

Naw, its when you have to go back to school Saturday morning and sit in the study hall.  

stlcharcoal

Focker said:

Personally, I have used lump in the Webers, but prefer briqs in them for a few reasons.  I would save the RW for your egg, and use Kingsford. 

With the leaky WSMs and kettles, you may have a hard time controlling temps.  Lump works great in a tightened up, air restricted egg.

Briqs don't burn as fast, or as hot, which is an advantage in everything minus a hells sear.  Much easier to maintain, even in challenging weather, which require more BTUs than normal.  Briqs also burn more evenly when spread out.

You will see this when lighting a chimney of lump.  Half is gone by the time it's completely lit.  A chimney of briqs stays gray, produces heat much longer.

I have to disagree with this a little.....maybe its just the way I'm reading it.

You're right that lump will burn a lot faster and hotter if you let the O2 get to it.  Open style park grills will go through lump like crazy, and a leaky kettle will do the same.

But lump also has nearly twice as many BTU's per pound, so you can get away with running a lot less.  There's no reason why half would be gone in a chimney, unless you're waiting for the gray.  The gray is a briquette thing because they're loaded with limestone.  There's no reason to wait with lump.  As soon as you hear the "tink, tink, tink" or feel the heat, dump it out.  You can pour it on TOP of other lump for a slower spreading fire, or pour lump on top of the burning lump for a hotter fire.  

Back to the limestone, that's why "charcoal" briquettes burn slower.  They're a bunch of stuff pressed together with an ash content up to 50% of their weight......where our lump is under 5%.  So 95% of our stuff burns, and as little of 50% of briquettes burn.  There's also a lot of water in briquettes that with the starch to hold them together.  That's why they fall apart once the moisture is cooked out.  So where lump (at least ours) has a moisture content of under 5%, briquettes have quite a bit more.  So you're paying for water, which you're using BTU's to boil it out.  

And the reason I say "charcoal" briquettes, is because some of them contain very little charcoal.  Anthracite (coal fly ash) is a lot cheaper than charcoal fines, they're already ground up, and they have a higher BTU/#.  But they can also have all kinds of crap in them, including sulfur.  Combine that with softwood sawdust, borax, limestone, sodium nitrate, starch, water, etc, and you have a briquette.   

I can back all of this up with the testing we've had done of our product and others.  I'm not going to post it as it's pretty obvious who is who.  It's also pretty obvious why briquettes are so much cheaper than lump.  Same reason that you have cheap hot dogs--lot of stuff in them that is cheap (and isn't meat).  They're all still turning a much higher profit that us at the lower price point, so that should tell you something.

YukonRon

@stlcharcoal
I still have a bag of briquettes in my garage, as I still have my Weber kettle. Once I started with lump, I was able to use 1/2 a chimney of medium to small lump pieces, and obtain enough heat to accomplish my quick cooks. Low and slow was a problem, however, I worked through that issue with offset and reloads, with Rockwood. 
Now it is used for storage and cold smoking only, which works very well.
I have not had a problem using lump due to the understanding of the fuel and the tools I had to work with.
Realize the amount of air needed is much less with the vents, I practically shut them down completely, top and bottom for low and slow.
I also use an IR temp gun to make sure everything is still rolling along. Sudden temp drops get my attention.

Foghorn

Yeah, I find that with lump in a kettle - or with briquettes in a kettle - with the lid on and the vents open it settles in somewhere between 300 and 350.  If you want it hotter, crack the lid.  If you want it cooler, close down the vents.  It doesn't hold temp or isn't as easily controlled as the egg, but it's a good cooker with lump or briquettes.  I prefer lump to get more total BTUs and to have less ash.  It's the oxygen that limits the fire if you're cooking with the lid on - not the type of charcoal.

tml1230

Since I wanted to use my rotisserie ,I did my first ever  duck on my 20 year old weber for Christmas dinner today using my rotisserie attachment loaded with rockwood.. Very impressed... Reached Temp a little faster than I anticipated but that's me not being the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree....
for the record, In my humble opinion, rockwood knocks it out of the park on any grilling apparatus.