My first bag of Fogo arrives later today. I ordered the 35 lb bag. 2x butts hit the BGE at 22:00 today! Thanks again CeramicChef!
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Thank you! I was just going to pose a question about The Good One lump as a local BBQ store is marketing it under their own name. I will have to pick up a bag and give it a whirl. Thanks again!Originally posted by Spinaker View PostComment
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I am excited to get a Good One Open Range in a couple weeks here locally. So I may pick up a bag of their lump to try too. Still I have (6) bags of Full Circle still to go through. As I said in my OP this is pretty decent stuff to date.Originally posted by Spinaker View Post
~Gunsmokers~Comment
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Results from my first cook with Fogo charcoal CeramicChef ...My family praised these butts as the "best ever" in taste. The only thing I did differently was to use Fogo lump. These were butts #35 and #36 that I've cooked in the last 15 months.
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fuzzydaddy - now that's some great looking pulled pork! Wonderful looking bark. And how can the family be wrong? I'm glad you and your family enjoyed the whole experience! Kudos and congrats to ya.
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I mostly use the KamadoJoe brand of lump. It costs more than the Royal Oak, but there are lots of large pieces in the bag and I have not found any garbage in it ever. On a lark I ordered some 40# bags of Kebroak restaurant lump off amazon. Will see how that works out. I may give the FOGO a shot after reading CeramicChef 's review on it.Comment
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Might be; I didn't look into it that much. I do have 120lbs of it coming my way though, so I will be able to venture an opinion as to quality fairly soon.Comment
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I hope you find "your" charcoal. For over a year I've been searching for a lump that works for me (low cost, consistently locally available, no foreign objects, some larger pieces, and one that doesn't overpower the food). Royal Oak is the only locally available that comes close. I'm very happy with my first cook with Fogo and even though it is about 1.5x the cost of Royal Oak I'm thinking it may well be the one for me as is ticks all my boxes except price, but I've often found that the "good stuff", whatever it may be, is not the cheapest. I purchased from fogocharcoal.com and shipping is free (aka built into the price).Comment
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fuzzydaddy I've used Royal Oak for years and thought it had a pretty good distribution of large, medium and small, but lately large is more difficult to find and the quantity of medium has begun to disappear. Has that been your experience, too?
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Great thread. I've been buying BGE charcoal for the past few years and have noticed the quality deteriorating quickly. I read BGE sources from Royal Oak, so none of the comments come as a big surprise. BGE is also very expensive at ~$30 for 20# bag. Cowboy charcoal is some of the worst I ever used. The taste it left on the brisket was a very odd acidic chemical flavor. I just tried B&B last week and I thought it was OK. Quite a bit of small and medium chunks, but the bag did contain a good amount of large and xL. Probably a 60/40 split between the big and small. I did order a big bag of Fogo two days ago and look forward to testing it out. Based upon the reviews, in this thread, it should be a great choice.Comment
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I use lump from time to time and find it provides at best a subtle difference in taste over briquettes. I don't know what kind I currently have but I used it for one cook and was very happy with it. It burned really hot and imparted a natural flavor that Kingsford can't quite match. When I get home I'll post the brand.Comment
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Well the Kebroak arrived. I've had a chance to smoke a pork butt and a chuck roast together, as well as to do a rotisserie chicken. So far so good. The lump comes in 40# bags with lots of medium and some large pieces. I have not got to the bottom of the bag yet, so there may be some small stuff I haven't seen yet. It has been easy to maintain temps from 225-350 so far, and it seems to last a good amount of time. I would buy it again for sure.Comment
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LA Pork Butt
Yes, lately most of it has been small/dust. I've not done an actual analysis, but my estimates are:
Large: < 1% (sometimes 0%).
Medium: < 40%
Small/Dust: > 60%.
I used 100% Fogo on my last cook and the butts were praised as the best ever. I'm thinking my next cook will use the Fogo for the large/medium as needed and the Royal Oak for the medium/small to see how that goes. My family's comment of "the best ever" makes me want to go 100% Fogo...hard to beat that.
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fuzzydaddy - I'd liken mixing FOGO with RO as blending a fine expensive single malt scotch with a crappy blend. All your going to do is ruin fine single malt! -
CeramicChef I appreciate your thoughts. I just want to use up the Royal Oak on hand, but it may well be a bad idea on my part to do so. If I do this and the family gives me a thumbs down...well that's totally on me.
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They swear by Rockwood over at the BGE forum. I bought two bags, and finally got to try it a couple days ago.
On the plus side, it gives off very little white/gray smoke before settling down to clear/light blue. There is almost no added smoke/wood flavor.
On the minus side, the average piece size is about 1/2 the size of a charcoal briquette; apparently if you order two bags, they are in a box big enough for four or five bags, and during shipping the bags get jostled and Rockwood's (self-described) harder wood breaks into small pieces. Kamados are air-flow regulated, so that shouldn't make a difference on longer cooks; I was making burgers, so I didn't get to experience that, all I got was an Egg that wanted to go to 700+ like a jet engine.
There's nothing really wrong with Rockwood, but there's nothing about it that makes me want to order it again. $22 for 20#, from Firecraft. I didn't see it on Amazon so I couldn't use the AR linking system.
I use Wegman's store brand, which is reportedly from Royal Oak. The last few bags have been lots of dust, but I attribute that more to the time of year; these are bags that were probably filled last spring and that have sat on the bottom of the pallet since then. The advantage is that they are readily available, and relatively cheap at $7/10#. The disadvantage is a pronounced smoky taste that gives every meal a similar essence, which gets tiresome.
I still have to burn through about 30# of the Rockwood and 15# of the Wegman's, then I may give FOGO a try, since I can order it from Amazon.Comment
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You know those change counting machines in supermarkets, where you can either take money and pay 10%, or get a gift card? Ours offers an Amazon gift card, and I dropped in almost $400 in change. So I've turned all the change that's accumulated around the house into useless junk that will accumulate around the house, or I can just burn it in the BGE...Originally posted by SkipComment
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[ASIDE: This thread is a perfect example of WHY I love this site.]
I've used Cowboy for years. I've tried other lumps but never found anything I really liked as well. THEN, about a year ago, chunks of oak that clearly were stubs and trimmings from hardwood floor strips started showing up in bags followed quickly by chunks of branch hardwood that had only a light surface char, sometimes just dust, rendering them useless for charcoal but great if I did pizzas all the time. The last bag "sparked" throughout the entire lighting cycle. So, today I logged on to see if anybody had any suggestions and found CeramicChef's original post and all your comments. I'm an Amazon Prime member. My FOGO will be delivered for free. Thanks, you all. BTW, recent Cowboy also has had large pieces needing multiple breakups and lots of dust. Breakup works fine when I use a chisel, and the dust goes into the compost bin.Last edited by Harry; March 31, 2016, 12:52 PM. Reason: another thought, of course, about the dust and large piecesComment
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My Fogo Super Premium arrived earlier this week and I had a chance to use it yesterday for both smoking and grilling. After using RO, BGE, Cowboy and B&B, I can say without question this is the finest lump charcoal I have ever used. The size of the chunks were darn near the size of my fist. I know the bottom with have smaller pieces, but the top was full of great sized pieces. The Fogo charcoal lights easily, buns with less ash than others, and has a nice consistent burn temperature.
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