First Burn of KK Extruded Coconut Charcoal

[slu]

Yesterday I did a test using the new ECC. Using a 7 3/4 pound bone-in pork butt, I brought the KK up 310 degrees. It took about 1 hour and 15 minutes to reach 310 degrees dome temperature. The pork butt was seasoned only with "Special Sh..t." After 5 1/2 hours, at an internal temperature which ranged from 185 -193, I pulled the roast. When I started this at 1230 hours, the weather was sunny and mildly warm. When I pulled the roast, it was raining! The aromas coming from the KK during the afternoon were wonderful!. The roast turned out perfectly and was very moist.

Now, the charcoal is ultra stable, and burns very evenly. It has almost no smoke profile, just a slight sweetness to it. I used 5 sticks, breaking them into thirds. It is a very efficient fuel. After five hours of roasting, an hour or so of heat sinking, and the extinguishing period, about 40% of the fuel remained and is quite reusable. I think Dennis has hit a home run with this charcoal. That being said, the size of the rods are a bit large, and I think most folks will find it necessary to break them into smaller pieces. I tried using a very sharp kindling hatchet, but found that breaking them, as Dennis suggested elsewhere on this forum, was easier, quicker, and cleaner. I can only surmise that if one fully loaded the basket with full 8" rods, the KK would burn for several days!

To light the charcoal, I placed about 6 Kingsford Competition briquettes in a chimney lighter, then two pieces of the ECC over them. The charcoal in the chimney ignited rapidly, and was then poured into the well in the KK. I'm sure Whiz will conduct a much more empirical review once he gets that screen door repaired!. My next test will be high heat to see how it does with pizza. Congratulations Dennis!

[slu]

Re: First Burn of KK Extruded Coconut Charcoal

Here are the after shots of the charcoal, shaken and unshaken respectively.

[DennisLinkletter]

Re: First Burn of KK Extruded Coconut Charcoal

Thanks for the kudos.. I just bang the pieces against each other. It takes a bit of a whack but theY will break each other. If you are going to build a high temp fire with them, you will need to put in enough to cover the floor of the fire basket and then some.. if you leave an open area the airflow takes the path of least resistance around the charcoal and does not really give you enough air. (unless you cheat and use my hair drier trick) So cover the floor of the basket, then make a little mountain to light and you'll be good to go..

Thanks again for taking the time to write about it..

[casebeag]

Re: First Burn of KK Extruded Coconut Charcoal

Keep up the research and reporting Slu.

I've got 100 pounds of the ECC coming with my KK.

Glad you're close by in the event i need a personal consultation.

[teddysurf]

Re: First Burn of KK Extruded Coconut Charcoal

Excellent review, Peter. The photos helped because I would not have thought such a small amount of fuel would have given you the 6+ hours of cook time with plenty of fuel remaining. Pretty impressive! Congrats, Dennis!

Has anyone tried lighting the ECC with the flame-throwing weed burner yet?

[slu]

Re: First Burn of KK Extruded Coconut Charcoal

If I keep up the research, I'll begin to look like my avatar!

[Syzygies]

Re: First Burn of KK Extruded Coconut Charcoal

If I keep up the research' date=' I'll begin to look like my avatar![/quote']

That's not you? (The T-shirt is nevertheless very funny.)

[slu]

Re: First Burn of KK Extruded Coconut Charcoal

I did another cook with the ECC last night. This time I wanted to see how it faired at high temperature. It was amazing! I used the residual ECC from the first cook which is shown in the original post. To this I poured a chimney full of lighted Kingsford Competition. I then added three rods of the ECC broken into three pieces each. The KK hit 550 in about 45 minutes. I was watching to see if the unit would climb above that mark without further augmentation. It was stable at 550 for about 15 minutes, then wham, the temperature started climbing. And climb it did! It quickly climbed to 725 degrees, and I then backed it to 700 degrees. It remained at 700 while I baked three pizzas. It took 4 minutes to cook the pies, and the recovery period between pies was less than 5 minutes. There was sufficient residual heat in the KK to have cooked all night. The pies were baked on the pizza stone in the dome, and I used the heat deflector on the main grill below the dome grill.

[slu]

Re: First Burn of KK Extruded Coconut Charcoal

Here's what was left of the ECC after the all-night cool-down.

[Firemonkey]

Re: First Burn of KK Extruded Coconut Charcoal

Thanks for the posts! I have been waiting for TNW to measure and report all about the new KKEC. We all know that the extruded lasts forever in a low and slow cook, but I am really interested in its holding power, and pound-for-pound comparison against lump for high temp cooks. By holding power, I mean its ability to hold together for re-use after a roasting temp cook.

With the previous extruded, I have found that it can become fragile after use. Almost like the binder burns away before the carbon. It looks like you might have had the same thing happen after shaking your basket? Was there a bunch of unburnt carbon in the bottom of the grill after shaking?

I usually remove the KKEC from the basket to switch back to lump, and store the unburnt portions for later. After minimal handling and bumping, its not unusual to find 25% of what went into the bag reduced to powder! For now, i have been pouring a little of it on top of a regular load of charcoal and hoping it doesn't just strain through. It is enough fuel (by weight) that I have been thinking about how i could better utilize it? Like maybe putting it in the cast iron smoke pot without the lid and adding a few lit pieces of lump?

The discussion of the utensil holder was also intriguing. Maybe I can explore some sort of contraption to solve a few things at once;

Making use of extruded fines

A smaller firebox to conserve fuel for shorter cooks

And maybe even protecting the lower door from being so damn hot.

...and now I have an idea. Something like a soup strainer:

Just have to figure out a way to let ash escape and still be able to use it for the powdered extruded?

Hey whiz...how about getting that testing done?

It would be cool to see a graph of temps vs consumption, so we could see if it was linear, or how quickly the burn time per pound tailed off as temp increases.

[slu]

Re: First Burn of KK Extruded Coconut Charcoal

When I shook the basket after the high temp. burn, some fines sloughed off the rods, but it was not significant. I'll be a bit more empirical next time. I'll sift the fines, and weigh them. The burnt rods were definitely more fragile than ones burned at low temperature.

[TheNakedWhiz]

Re: First Burn of KK Extruded Coconut Charcoal

I found that some of RJ's crap koal was extremely fragile after a burn and snuff. Stir it and it all just fell to powder. I do a max temp burn which usually lasts about 30 minutes and then snuff. When all is cool, i stir and see what happens. The KK Sustainable holds together as well as any coconut charcoal I've seen. I'm finishing up a few bits and pieces and then I should be able to publish in the next couple of days. I don't think I'll spoil any surprises if I say that this charcoal looks like it is everything everyone is hoping for.

[primeats]

Re: First Burn of KK Extruded Coconut Charcoal

Steven Raichlen ,on his latest Facebook post just lauded the talents of The Naked Whiz, and his review of Afire charcoal. One of the area reps was trying to peddle this stuff to me last week, she was surprised to see the good stuff displayed in the front window!