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Comments
Salisbury, NC...... XL,L,Mx2,S, MM, Mini BGE, FireDisc x2
So just buy whats in your area, evaluate it for your self and enjoy. Good lump under a buck a pound is fair imho. Bad lump is not worth the bag it comes in. For hot cooks you don't need the best of the best. For low and slow its important that your lump burns consistently and slowly. So if you have the room, stock up on different brands and use what works best for your meal your cooking.
Don't over think it and just enjoy the experience of the egg.
Large and Medium BGE, Kamado Joe Jr, Akorn Jr, big effin' pellet smoker, gas grill, fire pit, FireDisk, pack of angry cats, two turntables and a microphone, my friend. Registered republican.
plus, you don't have to use expensive smoking woods.... problem solved, thank you.
You can get away with cheaper lump(typically smaller pieces) for hotter cooks but you burn through it faster. You can use a more expensive lump for long low and slow cooks such as FOGO or KJ Big Block because it has larger pieces and burns longer. I burn B&B for regular grilling style cooks because it’s affordable and typically clean. I burn FOGO when smoking because we like the flavor and it lasts due to the biggest chunks in the industry. I offer my FOGO referral code when appropriate and usually get a bag or two for free each year to offset the cost.
I like Rockwood or Wicked Good as an all purpose lump if that’s what you are looking for.
If if you want to try FOGO, you can use this link to get 10% off your first order. Ordering it direct is the cheapest way to get it in the long run. You want to get the Super Premium (brown bag).
http://i.refs.cc/318NHiFL?u=1539650549807
Its BTU/# that determines the burn time and in some cases, larger chunks have a lower BTU/# because of all the wood fiber still holding them together. Wood has a lower BTU/# than carbon, since water is heavier than carbon. Those big chunks take longer to burn through in an open air grill, but the BTUs produced can be less. In a kamado, you are able to meter the oxygen, so that doesn't matter......burn a cannon ball size piece, or bunch of golf ball sized chunks......its all the same burn time if the carbonization is the same to start and the dome temp remains constant.
Where the big chunks in the Egg come in is for plugging up the grate and clogging the airflow. In the inverse, if those big chunks have too far of a gap on a low and slow without a controller, you can run into issues. The kindling temp for carbon is 673F and you need that much heat to ignite the piece next to it. And the amount of charcoal actually burning in a kamado with a 225F dome temp is very limited. So if you don't have a "fire bridge" to carry that heat over to the next piece, the fire can go out.
Best bet... Kick Ash Basket and a mix of sizes with properly carbonized lump.
Seriously, your post about lump are always very informative. Thanks for sharing that knowledge with us.
(2) XL BGE, LG BGE, KJ Jr, Ardore Pizza Oven, King Disc
Bloomington, IN - Hoo Hoo Hoo Hoosiers!
Large Big Green Egg & Weber Genesis II
This other misconception that "size = quality = high cost", or "small pieces = cheap" is totally backwards......or it can be (sort of).
There are a million factors that go into this but I'm just going to hit on the main ones. And the main one is: if it's properly carbonized, then it's brittle. Just like Lay's Potato Chips, it's going to break down in the bagging, palletization, and transit from mere agitation. If you have a huge chunk of 80-85% carbonized lump, then you either hand carried it out of the plant, or it was just well nested in the bag to preserve it. But most of the time, what you are holding is probably under 75% on the inside......so wood fiber is holding it together.
We saw a big box retailer with a dirt cheap brand over the summer with huge chunks in it. Every time I saw pictures of this product, I saw big BROWN chunks. These pieces were not "charcoal", they were charred wood. I can sell you a yule log sized piece that's black, heavy, and dense, by taking a log and hitting it with my weed burner. It's going to be 30-40#, because it's full or wood fiber, water, and volatiles. It's going to produce a ton of flames, odors, ash, and take for ever to light because of all the evaporation taking place dropping the kindling temp.
Cave man invented charcoal because it was solid fuel that was easy to light, quick to dry if it got wet, and burned hot quickly for a long time. We use it for the same reasons but also because it's a lot of BTU in a small package, doesn't produce much ash or taste, and mainly because it doesn't produce flames (which is the volatiles burning off). It's silly to buy under-carbonized "charcoal"......just use wood. Think of buying firewood by weight and getting green wood rather than seasoned. That's why states require you to buy by volume (measured in fractions of a "cord"), but you should still be ticked if it's not seasoned (15%-20% moisture content.)
Back to the money aspect. It's cheaper to produce bigger chunk "charcoal" because it spends less time in the kilns. If you can turn more kilns in a year, that's more money. Also, your tonnage is a better yield because you are using less carbon to burn out the water, thus sending more water out in the bags (which you sell by weight). Where we average 6.5#-7.0# of wood for every 1.0# of LUMP charcoal shipped, if you're shipping under-carbonized stuff, you might be down in the 4-5# wood:lump ratio. Also, the more brittle the lump is, the more you lose in the fines. Anything smaller than 1x1" gets falls through into the fines pile on ours. Take that down to 3/4"x3/4" or use a lower carbonization to start with, and your tonnage goes way up.
Take a look at bag VOLUME size. Our 20# bag is bigger than other 20# bags. We can only fit 30 bags on a pallet, when others can fit 35 on the same sized pallet and not exceed 48-52" on height. With all the 17.6#, 15.8#, and other odd ball sizes, you can't tell anymore, but the smaller the bag volume for the same size weight will tell you how much water is in the bag......since water is heavier than carbon. (It's a dead giveaway on briquettes since water soaked limestone is WAY heavier than carbon. Briquette users that pick up lump bags for the first time of how "Light" they are. No they're not light, they're just not heavy from all the limestone that's in briquettes.)
Once the lump hits the truck, then it starts breaking down again. ANY charcoal company is always going to fill the truck up. We double stack 30 bag pallets, some single stack 60 bag pallets. Doesn't matter how you stack when it comes to the lump--it all has to do with the logistics. The bags at the bottom feel the same weight. But considering the surface area, it's not that bad as one would think. The charcoal starts to break down and nest, and hopefully stops there.
Once it goes into distribution here's where stuff gets tricky. I saw a pic on IG the other day of charcoal stacked 4 pallets high. That's crazy. We only stack 2 pallets high in our main warehouse for anything that ships out of STL. For STL distribution in our other little warehouse (AKA: my treehouse/hideout, or "The BBQ Speakeasy"), we'll stack 3 high, but the bottom pallets are marked for restaurant customers who don't want the big chunks. Even with the extra 660# on it, that bottom pallet isn't much different than the one in the middle. The top pallet it always has the biggest chunks of course (as long as they didn't get swap from top to bottom as they go from the truck to the warehouse.) Top or bottom, this lump only travels much less and is always delivered single stacked on our box truck. Breakage is minimal even for the bottom pallets.
After it gets to stores and to consumers, it becomes a handling issue. Treat it like eggs, not rock salt.
So back to my original point, making big chunks *can* actually cheaper and making lump that breaks down to little pieces is more expensive.
***Important*** I'm not saying that every large chunk of charcoal you encounter is going to be filled with wood. There are people out there that can do it right, but it takes a certain type of wood, kilning, and handling. We cannot do that here in the US because we cannot start with whole trees or cord wood, nor can we slow burn because of the EPA req's. That's why you end up with longer flatter pieces in our charcoal.....it's coming from slabs. If you can clear cut whatever is in your path then slow burn not worrying about particulate, then you can actually get some pretty big chunks that are 75%+ carbon all the way through.
Here's the super simple test; you don't have to spend $1000's on BTU and carbonization tests every year like we do.
IF YOU CAN EASILY BREAK IT APART BY HAND, it's probably close 85% or more.
If it takes some force or you have to drop it, it's probably more like 80%.
If you can't break it, it's under 75% and NOT "charcoal" per se. You have charred wood.
You'll find under-carbonized pieces in ANY brand including ours. This isn't a highly controlled process. You start with all kinds of wood with different moisture contents, then fire has a mind of its own inside the kiln. The good news is with ours, it's mainly oak, with some hickory, maple, pecan, etc. A little of that smoke is not going to ruin your food like a bitter foreign wood will. But hopefully in the end, most of what is in the bag is about 80% carbon, a good mix of sizes, and all for a fair price for the BTU/#.
We sell those for agricultural use. Biochar soil amendment. It's a fantastic way to aerate tough soil and raise the pH. Holds the nitrogen & oxygen, filters out toxins, provides a micro "reef" for all the little critters in the soil. It's a miracle product and last forever.
We actually shipped quite a bit of it up to Alaska.....to green houses that uses the LED's because the growing season is so short. Yields were way up by boosting the carbon in the soil. Their mushrooms and tomatoes were HUGE.
They also get used in swine and poultry feed, copper manufacturing, landfill retention walls, etc. We've even sold it to the Army for making munitions like flares and rockets......they wouldn't send me any samples.
So for everyone that complains we're selling them fines, they don't realize that there's almost just as money in them as lump. Once biochar really catches on in the US, we'll be paying to grind up lump to make it. But with all the fertilizer companies here in STL and the Midwest, I doubt that will happen anytime soon. There's a reason why "organic" falls under much less stringent rules in this country as it does in others.
BGE XL++Flameboss 300 WiFi++Blackstone 36"++Weber 26" kettle
In a pinch I will use Cowboy when I'm out of plywood scraps and old pressure treated deck boards !
Buford,Ga.
LBGE, 2 SBGE, Hasty-Bake Gourmet