I alluded to this in scullybones’ topic Jealous Devil vs B&B Oak, where I had to abort a cook because my lump wouldn’t burn clean; today I had a chance to look at it a bit closer.
I fired up my BGE and let it run for a bit; after 10 minutes of open fire, it looks like this:
Which just doesn’t happen on an open fire in a BGE. An open fire burns clean, and starts smoking when you shut the lid and tamp the vents some; it will give white smoke as the dome temp rises, and usually stops at around 225° when the lump dries out and there is no water left. Then you get clean burning lump, and no smoke at all except maybe thin blue smoke from any wood you add. Also, this doesn’t smell good. It smells like creosote.
I think this is why:
The lump charcoal isn’t completely carbonized! It’s obvious on the center log, but also you can see on the piece in the lower left, it is also brown and woody-looking.
20 minutes later,
And you can see it’s still smoking. And this is blue smoke, so it’s woody, not creosote and not water vapor. That’s wood. (And it still doesn’t have a nice bbq smell; it has a wood fire smell.)
15 minutes after that:
And that didn’t combust like charcoal does. It combusted like wood does. I’ve had an open-lid basket of lump charcoal burn for hours; this is done smoking, but it’s also almost completely burned out, like a small fireplace fire that might last half an hour.
Anyhow. It happens. I don’t keep my bags of lump separate; this could be FOGO brown bag, it could be JD, it could be B&B brown bag. Thinking on it, it’s probably FOGO brown bag, not JD, because the pieces are mostly huge (so big they don’t pour out of a Kingsford caddy, I had to take the lid off). Not that JD is rubble, but this is ALL boulders. I don’t buy FOGO brown any more, the black bag is the exact same product, costs less, and I find it to be more versatile and easier overall to control. But this one was left over from last year.
I fired up my BGE and let it run for a bit; after 10 minutes of open fire, it looks like this:
Which just doesn’t happen on an open fire in a BGE. An open fire burns clean, and starts smoking when you shut the lid and tamp the vents some; it will give white smoke as the dome temp rises, and usually stops at around 225° when the lump dries out and there is no water left. Then you get clean burning lump, and no smoke at all except maybe thin blue smoke from any wood you add. Also, this doesn’t smell good. It smells like creosote.
I think this is why:
The lump charcoal isn’t completely carbonized! It’s obvious on the center log, but also you can see on the piece in the lower left, it is also brown and woody-looking.
20 minutes later,
And you can see it’s still smoking. And this is blue smoke, so it’s woody, not creosote and not water vapor. That’s wood. (And it still doesn’t have a nice bbq smell; it has a wood fire smell.)
15 minutes after that:
And that didn’t combust like charcoal does. It combusted like wood does. I’ve had an open-lid basket of lump charcoal burn for hours; this is done smoking, but it’s also almost completely burned out, like a small fireplace fire that might last half an hour.
Anyhow. It happens. I don’t keep my bags of lump separate; this could be FOGO brown bag, it could be JD, it could be B&B brown bag. Thinking on it, it’s probably FOGO brown bag, not JD, because the pieces are mostly huge (so big they don’t pour out of a Kingsford caddy, I had to take the lid off). Not that JD is rubble, but this is ALL boulders. I don’t buy FOGO brown any more, the black bag is the exact same product, costs less, and I find it to be more versatile and easier overall to control. But this one was left over from last year.
Then he pauses to hear my comeback, which can happen especially if we two couples have been sipping the adult bevvies while he grills. All good times.
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