Lump Charcoal Reviews

[Mosca]

I too will attest to ridiculously long cooks with the BGE. Started one at midnight that ended the next day @ 4PM. Crack the top and bottom just a smidge and I get 225*, every time.

Kamados aren't perfect, like every tool they need workarounds for some things. But they do some things very well, and long slow cooks is one of them.

[Breadhead]

Fuzzy... I don't worry too much about what's in the bag as far as the size of the lump is concerned. I open the bag when I bring it home and separate it in 2 plastic storage bins I keep under my cart. I put all of the big chunks into 1 bin and then in another bin I use a separater panel to divide into 2 sections. 1 side for medium chunks and the other side for small chucks and the dust. I only use the big chunks for low and slow cooks. I have no idea why you are only getting 12 hours out of a full fire box of lump if you are keeping your temp between 225/250. I've never had to stop a cook to add lump at those temps and like I said above I usually have lots of unburned lump after a 16 hour cook.

[fuzzydaddy]

I have the large BGE and wish I had the XL (18.25" vs 24" grid diameter). So far I've been able to get around 12 hours at ~225 by placing the lump as Breadhead says. As my techniques improve I hope to get longer. I'm currently trying Royal Oak (USA made version) as it's the only one available locally that's a reasonable price and is fairly even sizes with not too much very small/dust. I tried BGE lump initially and it wasn't that good (lots of dust and plastic) and was pricey. I tried Fogo from Amazon and like it except it has huge pieces and tons of dust/very small pieces, probably due to breaking up in shipping. I hope to settle on one soon and stick with it.

[Breadhead]

They are great smokers and they do use very little lump for low and slow cooks. However when I use the wok in it at 800 degrees it will burn lump pretty fast. I bake bread in it at 500 degrees and that uses a lot of lump. Mine is the large BGE and I've only been able to get 25 lbs of pork butt into it at one time. They have the XL size that you can get a lot more meat in.

[JeffJ]

16 hours??!!?? Wow! I've never used a BGE but I understand that because they are so well insulated the tiniest of fire will create the needed heat with the bottom vent barely open. It sounds like your experience proves that.

[Breadhead]

I have a BGE and I buy my lump coal at Smart and Final. I get a 40lb bag for $15. I learned the proper way to load my fire box for loooog low and slow cooks in an article on the Nakkid Whiz. Big pieces of lump at the bottom, then medium size above them and then small pieces and dust on the top. The longest cook I've done was pork butts at 225ish for 16 hours. I never had to add lump and at the end of that cook there was still 25% of the lump that was unused.

[JeffJ]

Cool link, Rok.
The local grocery store sells Mali and I was a bit surprised by the review, which I'll get to in a moment. Their issue was the same issue I have - the size of the pieces are all over the place with WAY too many really small pieces. They praised it's high temperature burn which has been my experience and they praised the length of the burn. The surprising part was their praise of it's long burn time. To me, it seems to burn out very quickly, although it doesn't create much ash which I also agree with. Perhaps lump just burns REALLY quickly and this is still better than a lot of other brands? I just picked up 2 bags of Kingsford competition which I will use once my bag of lump runs out. For low and slow I will stick with Kingsford Blue.

[Dr ROK]

Ran across this link and thought I'd share:

http://www.nakedwhiz.com/lumpindexpage.htm?bag