I’m fortunate enough to have an Academy Sports within 5 miles of my house that carries B&B Natural Oak briquettes. I had read mixed reviews on it but saw a few members of these forums that like it. At $10 for a 17.6 lb bag for a natural briquette I figured I need to try it myself and see what I think. This is not an exhaustive review of temperatures, ash creation, etc, it’s just my observations on a first run.
I decided to try it on an easy first cook, a half dozen boneless, skinless chicken breasts and a half dozen sausages. I have a Weber 22 Kettle with SnS for my setup. I followed the standard SnS directions for a cook like this and lit 3/4 of a chimney of coals. I noticed the initial heat up didn’t produce nearly as much smoke as a KBB start and I preferred the aromas produced vs KBB. I waited until I had some flames coming out the top with no smoke to dump them into the SnS. Temps on the grill quickly came up to the 325 range I wanted for the cook. Food came out fine. I shut down both vents about 5:45 p.m. One thing I did notice was that the temps seemed to take a very long time to come down. At 8:45 p.m. I still had grill temps at 100. Usually shutting down vents results in the pile of KBB coals quickly going out, usually within 90 minutes I’m well below 100. The other thing I noticed is that I seemed to still have a lot of the B&B left. That surprised me as I’ve read these natural products don’t seem to last as long. I may find things completely different on a long cook and I’ll try one soon with them but my initial impression of B&B Natural Oak briquettes is good and I’ll keep using them until I come across a reason to change or some random whim makes me try something else. Now I just need to get the store to carry more than 3 bags at a time.
I decided to try it on an easy first cook, a half dozen boneless, skinless chicken breasts and a half dozen sausages. I have a Weber 22 Kettle with SnS for my setup. I followed the standard SnS directions for a cook like this and lit 3/4 of a chimney of coals. I noticed the initial heat up didn’t produce nearly as much smoke as a KBB start and I preferred the aromas produced vs KBB. I waited until I had some flames coming out the top with no smoke to dump them into the SnS. Temps on the grill quickly came up to the 325 range I wanted for the cook. Food came out fine. I shut down both vents about 5:45 p.m. One thing I did notice was that the temps seemed to take a very long time to come down. At 8:45 p.m. I still had grill temps at 100. Usually shutting down vents results in the pile of KBB coals quickly going out, usually within 90 minutes I’m well below 100. The other thing I noticed is that I seemed to still have a lot of the B&B left. That surprised me as I’ve read these natural products don’t seem to last as long. I may find things completely different on a long cook and I’ll try one soon with them but my initial impression of B&B Natural Oak briquettes is good and I’ll keep using them until I come across a reason to change or some random whim makes me try something else. Now I just need to get the store to carry more than 3 bags at a time.
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