Charcoal

[5698k]

Ok, I'm a big fan of coco char, but I have to admit I've been using another brand of regular lump to save a buck. Well, I'm getting what I pay for. I'm thinking of simply using coco exclusively, but I wanted to get ideas of possible options other KKer's are using. So, if there's a really good option out there, I'd love to hear about it. I know CC is really happy with Fogo, but I'd love to hear other suggestions.

 

 

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[ckreef]

I do a lot of high heat cooks and grilling. Coco char is not a good choice for those types of cooks. 

I use Royal Oak. It's cheap and readily available. I burn through a 15 lb bag a week so price counts for me. 

 

[Stile88]

I use royal oak and have been happy with it for years ..i had wanted to try fogo lump but the price of almost 50 a bag has turned me off but i have heard great things about it plus has great reviews

[Keith B]

I use Rockwood lump.  It is very consistent in size and burn.  I just recently tried the coffee lump from Dennis and I must say that I really loved that!  Not sure I can justify a new KK whenever I need to restock though. 

[dstr8]

Its darn near impossible to find good hardwood lump in the western US outside of major metro areas all things non-mesquite related.   I flat out love both of Dennis' charcoal products:   Coco and Coffee.    I use them interchangeably but lean to Coco when I want a low flavor impart and a longer relatively lower temp cook.   But, I do use CocoChar for my Neapolitan pizza bakes ... no problem hitting and keeping the KK at 800F using just CocoChar.   

I also appreciate how little fines/smalls/dust are in CoffeeChar.   Dennis and his crew do a fantastic job of pre-sorting.  Whereas most other lump I've tried always has a big pile of unusable dust/tiny pieces in every bag.   Sometimes I get what I pay for

Edited May 25, 2017 by dstr8

[5698k]

I'm getting to the point of using coco exclusively. I've been using RO for a while, but it's getting to where it's just too strong, I smell it everywhere. I used to use ozark oak, but it's not available. I've heard great things about maple leaf, but I'm not in Canada. Carbon Del Sur, nothing but fines. It's to the point I have to order what I want to use, and by then, I'd just as soon use coco.


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[MacKenzie]

Rob, as you might guess I am partial to Maple Leaf but you just know where I live.  

[Jon B.]

Rob,

I tried this brand and has become my favorite. Sent some to Tony B. and I believe he had good results also.  Lowe's was selling it but I think they have discontinued carrying it.   It is also marketed under a different name. I will try to see if I can find the name of that brand.  Our local Wegman's grocery store started carrying it  but I can't remember the exact name.

[Jon B.]

I believe this is produced by the same company.  

[ckreef]

20 minutes ago, Jon B. said:

Rob,

I tried this brand and has become my favorite. Sent some to Tony B. and I believe he had good results also.  Lowe's was selling it but I think they have discontinued carrying it.   It is also marketed under a different name. I will try to see if I can find the name of that brand.  Our local Wegman's grocery store started carrying it  but I can't remember the exact name.

I've used that before. On sale it was a good deal, full price not so much. Better quality than RO but about the same size distribution. 

I have 3 boxes left I'm saving for Yakatori cooks. 

 

[Jon B.]

13 minutes ago, ckreef said:

I've used that before. On sale it was a good deal, full price not so much. Better quality than RO but about the same size distribution. 

I have 3 boxes left I'm saving for Yakatori cooks. 

 

I agree about it's worth at the full price cost.....both Shuley and I got this charcoal at a reduced price.  Have so much that I didn't bother check the price of the Black Diamond at Wegman's.   

[ckreef]

44 minutes ago, Jon B. said:

I agree about it's worth at the full price cost.....both Shuley and I got this charcoal at a reduced price.  Have so much that I didn't bother check the price of the Black Diamond at Wegman's.   

Unfortunately by the time I got in on that sale I could only find 5 boxes. I burned through 2 and I'm saving the last 3.

For the sale price I was prepared to buy every box I could find. 

[Shuley]

Yes I prefer the charbroil and black diamond lump. I picked up a ton at 50% off and have probably 6-8 boxes left. I much prefer it to royal oak, but at full price, I don't think I'd buy it

[Smokydave]

I've be saving my CoCo from my KK purchase years ago like it was more valuable than gold.  In the meantime, I use RO lump, but only the stuff made in the USA (or at least stamped that way.)  Was buying at Depot, but the bags keep getting smaller and the price going up.  Just saw it for something like $9.97 for 15.4 pounds (the .4 pounds is probably the ubiquitous rock that seems to be in EVERY bag.)  It used to be $12 something and was a bigger (17lb) bag.  However, I did just see RO USA lump at WalMart, in a 17lb bag for $9 something, so I will stock up there.

I haven't been able to connect with anyone even remotely local to do a CoCo share in the Philadelphia area, otherwise I would just bite the bullet and shell out.  Probably get some smoking wood too.  In the meantime, I guess I'll stick with the RO.

[tony b]

Like Jon said, I do like the CharBroil. Will have to see if I can find the Black Diamond around here, as the local Lowes didn't carry the CharBroil. 

My current go-to is Rockwood. LOVE IT! Can get it locally, too - Bonus! 

Tried Fogo per CC's recommendation. Didn't turn out to be a big fan. Believe it or not, because the pieces were TOO BIG. I had to get out a screwdriver and mallet and chisel them down. Hard to light, even with a MAPP torch. Had fires go out on me after starting cooks. YMMV

I will use RO in a pinch. Like Smokydave said, always finding pieces of kiln rock in them. Stuff is cheap and readily available year round here. But, lots of unusable smalls and fines and it burns up really fast. 

I've had a tendency to hoard my CoCo Char as well. I only break out a few sticks for extra long cooks - whole butts & packer cut briskets; or, for hot smoking salmon because the smoke is so clean.

[5698k]

I tied fogo, not my style either. I'll look for the rockwood. I'm almost to the point of using coco exclusively, I just like the stuff, plus there's another kk owner here in nola willing to work with me on supply. As I said before, the RO is annoying my sniffer, it also is just dirty, I get charcoal dust all over my patio furniture.


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[cschaaf]

I'm not too picky about my lump

KJ and RO are the two I use most - mostly due to A. Price and B. Availability 

I can get RO at Home Depot or Walmart that are just over a mile from my house. For KJ, I wait for a Costo road show and load up.

I've tried a few bags of Fogo that I had shipped. Like @tony b, some of the pieces are gigantic - takes some work, but it's better than getting chips and dust, I suppose

If I use the Fogo, I usually add a top layer of RO so I can light that, then let the RO do the hard work of lighting the dense Fogo. I usually do that for the KJ lump too. 

Got some Jealous Devil shipped and I like that. Nice sized pieces - probably 80% of the bag is slightly smaller than fist size pieces. The main problem was that the bags were filthy when they made it to me - Fogo had similar issues, but not as bad.

I like the Char-Broil stuff in the box, too... but as others have said, only at a sale price. I find the boxes easy to stack, clean, but unwieldy to just dump the lump in. They weren't made to dump into a grill that has a hinged lid. The lid stops the box from tipping far enough.

The only stuff I have tried and haven't liked was some brand I got at Academy Sports. They only show B & B on their page, but I don't think that was it. I might still have a bag in the shed, I'll have to look. It had way too heavy smoke flavor for me.

I noticed some jumbo bags of Cowboy at my Costco recently, but every time I've been, we had to pick up other stuff so I haven't had room.

 

[tony b]

Did a search and found the Naked Whiz's review. 

http://www.nakedwhiz.com/lumpdatabase/lumpbag113.htm

I've only used the one box so far, but it had good size distribution and I liked the way it started and cooked. So, I'm looking to Jon and Shuley to provide feedback on box-to-box consistency of the size distribution. Amazon sells it for a reasonable price (free shipping with Prime), but I'd still hate to order it and get a box where 20% wasn't usable! A Large box (16.4 lbs) is $28. Unfortunately, it's out of stock right now. The small & medium boxes don't have as good a price point per pound.

[billg71]

I like the Fogo but I've found it's not really sized well. The small bags have a lot of small pieces and some medium, the large bags have some medium but are mostly large chunks, at least the couple bags I tried. It's clean(no foreign objects) and burns well but I had to bust down a lot of the big chunks in the large bags.

I've done one cook with the Coffee Char and it worked well. But I still found too many large chunks(say medium-fist size) that had to be broken up to get a good mix. Maybe I'm doing something wrong?

Best,

Bill

 

[tony b]

@billg71 - Nope, I had the same issue with the Fogo. Kept a screwdriver and a rubber mallet in my charcoal bin to break up those huge pieces. For folks that haven't seen it, I'm talking pieces the size of cantaloupes or a head of iceberg lettuce, not baseball sized, which is the standard that I use for "large."

@Jon B. - I was in the local Ace Hardware store today and guess what? They had a box of the Black Diamond ($20). So check your local Ace store. I will likely go back and get it when I get through my last box of your kind gift. I just opened it, and I think the size of the pieces was similar to box #1.

In fact, today I built a wooden box frame out of 1 x 1's with 1" wire mesh fabric stapled to it to screen my charcoal. I just empty the bag on top of it, give it a little shake and all the dust and tiny pieces drop through into a Rubbermaid bin. The usable pieces stay on the top and get put into my charcoal bin; the dust and smalls in the other Rubbermaid tub get dumped.