Frontier Charcoal

Unknown

Just was at Home Depot a few days ago for lump charcoal. They used to sell Cowboy brand and now have Frontier. The Frontier was made in Mexico. All hardwood and no lumber scraps unlike Cowboy brand. Great I thought and tried it out. Well, it is very difficult to light in a chimney starter. Once lit, not sparking or popping and takes forever to get up to temp. With a completely clean egg and the vents fully open, I could only get up to 450 degrees! A few days later I take the egg apart to make sure there is no blockage in the lower vents and try again. Still only 450 degrees and I am trying to do pizza. So I put the fire out and wait until cool enough to get the charcoal out and use the only other stuff I have which is some Mesquite lump also from Mexico. In about 30 minutes I am where I want to be at 700 degrees. On the Frontier bag it does not say what type of wood it is but the stuff is a pain to light and never gets hot. I tried two different bags. Don't buy this stuff unless you are doing a long slow burn like a pork butt. Any one else tried Frontier form Mexico?

Unknown

http://www.nakedwhiz.com/lumpdatabase/lumpbag60.htm

Ozarkshooter

Yup! Not worth it, even at half the price of the good stuff. Had the same problems, nothing above 450 until I switched back to the good stuff. Never again.

The Naked Whiz

That was from Argentina, FWIW....

The Naked Whiz

I'll assume the problem was that it was mostly small pieces and you didn't have much airflow through the fire itself. I just checked and of all the 98 different brands I have tested, the lowest temperature I could get any charcoal to was 610.

I just wish they would quit producing so many different varieties. I have enough to do without doing reviews of their charcoal de jour, lol!

61chev

The Frontier I got was from Sam's a 40
3 bag for 14.95 and it is working well for me I think it producesa little more ash but the rest is fine

61chev

The Frontier I got was from Sam's a 40
3 bag for 14.95 and it is working well for me I think it producesa little more ash but the rest is fine

Egghead-Sooner

Hmm thats really weird, I also used to purchase cowboy from Home Depot bc i liked the clean burn when I wanted to do some baking for cookies, breads and other stuff. I picked up a bag of Frontier bc I was low on lump and didn't feel like shopping around. I haven't tried to get temps above 450 but found it lit just as well as other brands and did do really well for a low and slow I did on the fourth weekend. Maybe Ill try a steak in the future to see if I can get a high sear temp. You may want to try Walmart and see if they sell Royal Oak. I used to think the ones where I live (Oklahoma City) didn't but saw after the one close to me began selling it after the store went through a remodel or reset.

antmara

I bought a bag of it from Sam's as well, price was great as 61 said (40# bag for $14.95), first few burns were fine with lots of big, and I mean BIG chunks that lasted 2 or 3 cooks. However, once I started getting further into the bag it became much harder to light, much harder to get to even low and slow temps, and nearly impossible to get to higher temps (had to use my wife's hairdryer to get it over 300 deg, she wasn't happy about this either). When I did finally get it to a higher temp, it flamed, and the flame would not go out. Also, everytime I raked my ash out, there were two handfuls of what looked like lava rocks in the remaining coals on my grate, very disappointed, cuz paying nearly $20 for a bag of BGE is disheartening as much as I cook.

Frank from Houma

I'm buying Frontier at Sam's for 14.27

It does pop a lot when lightin with a weed burner but I get over that

Had my Tel Tru on the XL pegged out the other day on a cleaning burn

Haven't had issues getting to high temp

Maybe I'm anal but I make sure there is a good mix of big and small pieces in each load

Been dumping the lump in 5 gallon buckets and mixing big and small - just easier to haul the lump to the Eggs that way.