Charcoal: Lump vs Briquette

[rotuts]

in a current Cook's Country , Season 6 , Episode One

 

they test out charcoal  lump vs briquette .

 

for review purposes :

 

 

its been a while since I used charcoal , and it was always briquettes.

 

in my distant memory briquettes had a bit of a negative buzz :  fillers , binders  etc

 

that might affect taste .

 

Lump buzz was ; burn hotter , cleaner , better flavor .

 

I take ATK and CC equipment tests w a bit of salt :    very late to SV , iPot , Combi ovens

 

their test results :

 

6 qt chimney starter :   briquettes 5 - 6 lbs,  lump  2 - 4 lbs.

 

temp :  briquettes :  660 F to 720 F , lump 100 F less

 

time :  briquettes :  300F or higher : 2.5 to 3.5 hours .  Lump : 40 min to 2 hours

 

cost :  briquette 62 to 96 cents / lb   lump :  $1 to $1.43 / lbs

 

no taste difference was a noted between lump and briquette by their ' large ' panel , including  between brands.

 

briquette's burned hotter  ( by several hundred degrees ) , longer , with very little waste

 

lump had a big range of waste  ( small bits , dust , uneven size ) by brand 

 

but all lump brands had bits and pieces and dust that fell through the chimney starter.

 

they did say many people claim lump BBQ tastes better

 

but they didn't find that in their study .

 

quite interesting Id say .

 

Pellet grills are probably in their demographics .

 

P.S.:  for the tests they did flank steak  ( hot and fast )  burgers 

 

and a shoulder roast ( low and slow )

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Dave the Cook]

This is pretty consistent with what other scientifically oriented BBQ folk say. Meathead Goldwyn even refers to the CI study. There's a lot of tradition among aficionados in any pursuit, and barbecuing, grilling and smoking aren't immune to it. Add in selection bias and you've got (a) myth(s) that die(s) hard.

 

But there's a reason professional/competition crews opt for briquettes or pellets. It's all about predictability and control. I think the rap on briquettes (fillers, etc.) applies to off-brand charcoal. You probably shouldn't be buying Rando Briquettes; stick with major brands like Royal Oak, Kingsford (originally an outgrowth of Henry Ford's plan for total vertical integration), etc., and you'll be fine.

[chileheadmike]

I've been barbecuing for a long time, both back yard and competition. I used to use Kingsford with some wood chunks. It does have a distinctive odor, and I can test it in the meat. I've gone to using lump. Usually Cowboy brand. 

[AlaMoi]

Cowboy brand is my fav as well, however - they produce in USA and Mexico

fyi . . .

the USA uses hardwood cutoff from Carolina furniture manufacturing, the Mexico product uses trees.

the bag of the Mexico production I bought had huge chunks - as in take a hatchet and chop them up so you can use them . . .

 

over the years any number of charcoal briquette makes have hit the boiling water pot due to their "ingredients" . . .

Kingsford:

Kingsford Charcoal is made from charred soft and hardwoods such as pine, spruce, hickory, oak and others depending on which regional manufacturing plant it comes from. That char is then mixed with ground coal and other ingredients to make a charcoal briquette. As of January 2016, Kingsford Charcoal contains the following ingredients:^[7][8]

• Wood char - Fuel for heating
  Mineral char - Fuel for heating
  Mineral carbon - Fuel for heating
  Limestone - Binding agent
  Starch - Binding agent
  Borax - Release agent
  Sawdust - Accelerate ignition

curiously, borax is banned in food products, it is toxic - but apparently when deposited on your steak by burning charcoal, is not a problem.

[rotuts]

Excellent  points .

\

ATK // CC is not in the nuance business . 

 

and Im sure there is a lot of nuance in BBQ fuel

 

@chileheadmike 

 

you mentioned Kingsford has  ' a distinctive odor '

 

I don't doubt it .  is it still there when the charcoal has turned to ' white ash ? '

 

Im wondering what burns off and what's left after that

 

Id say , for the average enthusiast 

 

the ATK//CC results suggest reliable brand name briquettes 

 

are cheaper , get hotter , and last longer .

 

w more interest and experience , one can enjoy the nuance of 

 

quality lump.

 

dont know what to make of the borax though .

Edited September 15, 2023 by rotuts (log)

[Laurentius]

4 hours ago, AlaMoi said:

That char is then mixed with ground coal and other ingredients to make a charcoal briquette.

 

(emphasis mine)  That does it for me--I'm only buying lump.  Coal also explains why briquettes burn hotter.

 

Would anyone like a sprinkle of fly ash on their steak?

[Captain]

Lump charcoal is my go to but very specific brands.  It all depends on the wood.  Thailand and other places produce charcoal from mangroves.  Not very pleasant at all.

In Australia there are a few choices to be had but hard wood is the best.  Briquette is convenient and I will sometimes use it to start the fire I need for long cooks or for short fast cooking on smaller BBq's.  Even briquette's very greatly, like some made from coconut, they burn hot but fast.  Others burn hotter some not. 

[chileheadmike]

On 9/15/2023 at 5:44 PM, rotuts said:

Excellent  points .

\

ATK // CC is not in the nuance business . 

 

and Im sure there is a lot of nuance in BBQ fuel

 

@chileheadmike 

 

you mentioned Kingsford has  ' a distinctive odor '

 

I don't doubt it .  is it still there when the charcoal has turned to ' white ash ? '

 

Im wondering what burns off and what's left after that

 

Id say , for the average enthusiast 

 

the ATK//CC results suggest reliable brand name briquettes 

 

are cheaper , get hotter , and last longer .

 

w more interest and experience , one can enjoy the nuance of 

 

quality lump.

 

dont know what to make of the borax though .

I was in a discussion, many years ago, regarding at what stage you should add briquettes. Some argued that you should wait until ashed over and white, others said, there's nothing on the outside that isn't on the inside so it doesn't matter. 

 

I can smell it, both on the initial fire-up and after it's been burning a while. When I judged, I could smell it when they opened the box. If the team used lighter fluid, that was worse.

 

In my experience, lump burns hotter, briquettes burn longer and probably more evenly. 

 

I'd be curious to read what Norm has to say. 

[scamhi]

we only use lump charcoal. 

my current favorite is Rockwood Charcoal

Cowboy charcoal uses lot of charred lumber scraps.

this is a great database for charcoal brands.

Naked Whiz

[Deephaven]

That's interesting.  I can taste the smell of the lump on my food and love it.  The smell of briquettes turns me off.  I've read countless BBQ pages where the claim is briquettes off flavor your food and took it as fact.  This makes me want to do a test back to back.  Trying to decide if it is worth sacrificing a pork butt for...

[TicTac]

Why anyone would want to use a heavily processed product vs. a lump of fire treated wood is beyond me.  Who knows what garbage is in those briquettes!

 

I use a lump charcoal from Argentina.  Great stuff. 

 

Sometimes I will toss a piece of cherry wood for smoke, if so desired.

[Dave the Cook]

"lump burns hotter than briquettes"

 

This sort of received wisdom drives me crazy. Almost everyone says it, but no one cites research to back it up. Even the well-regarded Naked Whiz only rates charcoal heat by stars. ("I buy X Brand lump charcoal because it get four-stars hot"?)The only study I've seen is the one conducted by Cook's Illustrated that @rotuts cites above, and it says that briquettes and lump burn at about the same temperature for a while and after that, briquettes burn longer.

 

On top of that, why does it matter which one burns hotter? You need a really hot (say, >750°F) fire when you're cooking really thin things for a short period of time. Either fuel will get you there, with enough air. But an awful lot of barbecuing isn't about high temperature, it's about controlling temperature. Here, where consistency counts, briquettes rule.

 

Besides, wood char (which defines lump charcoal), mineral char, mineral carbon --  it's all just plain carbon, regardless of the original source. Unless the fuel contains incompletely carbonized material (as large chunks of lump charcoal often does, then the uncarbonized wood will impart some flavor), it's all going to create tasteless smoke. Creating tasteless smoke is the job of charcoal, which is why you let a fire burn until it's giving off pale blue or colorless smoke. Colorless smoke means fewer and smaller particles = less flavor. If you want flavor, add raw wood. That way, you can control how much flavor you impart to the food. As Meathead Goldwyn says, "Charcoal is for heat; wood is for flavor."

 

As for additives and such, charcoal briquettes are no more processed than bread, wine or sausage (to name only three examples), and we know exactly what's in briquettes. If you manufacture. import or distribute hazardous materials, by law you must provide information about that product in the form of a Safety Data Sheet (SDS). One of the things you must include on this SDS is a list of ingredients. For Kingsford Briquettes, that list is charcoal, ashes, anthracite coal, cornstarch, limestone, sawdust and boric acid. The first thing to know about all of these ingredients is that they all occur in nature. Second, no petroleum by-products or other waste products. A maximum of 23% of the ingredients are not carbon. In particular, boric acid amounts to 1% or less (it's used to make it easier to remove briquettes from molds). I don't think anyone on these forums needs to be reminded that it's the dose that makes the poison. 

 

 

 

[Laurentius]

7 hours ago, Dave the Cook said:

anthracite coal, cornstarch, limestone, sawdust and boric acid. The first thing to know about all of these ingredients is that they all occur in nature.

Do you dispute that coal contains heavy metals?  These metals do, obviously, occur in nature, but do you want their combustion products and residue in your food?

 

Bear in mind that coal is added to briquets, whereas any heavy metals in lump charcoal had to make it into the tree(s).

 

I used to cook a lot on a solid-fuel stove, using wood, charcoal and anthracite coal.  The coal burned much hotter, so much hotter that it required special grates and doors.  Made for great wok hei, though.

 

If you need citations, compare the Btu ratings for charcoal and anthracite.

Edited September 19, 2023 by Laurentius
Auto spell error (log)

[Dave the Cook]

Thanks for sending me down that rabbit hole! 😉

 

Without getting into a lot of arithmetic and numbers related to coal production and the uses of different types of coal, I have come to the conclusion that yes, charcoal briquettes contain trace amount of some heavy metals, and that lump charcoal probably doesn't (it has to do with how coal is created).  I have also come to the conclusion that I'm not bothered by it very much, given that the tiny bits of heavy metals in the ash left behind in my grill are dwarfed by the 30,000+ tons of heavy metals left behind by power plants (and that's just in the US).

 

As far as I can ascertain, anthracite is the only type of coal used in making briquettes. It's 80 - 95% carbon, and at most it makes up 40% of briquette composition (if we accept Kingsford as typical). Lignite and bituminous coal, both of which have much higher percentages of heavy metals in their residues than anthracite, are what most power plants (in the US and elsewhere) burn for energy. It seems that if you're going to burn coal, anthracite is the one you want. It's cleaner to start with, and burns cleaner (and hotter) to boot. It seems that its main drawback is its relative scarcity, and therefore its relatively high price.

 

 

[Laurentius]

5 hours ago, Dave the Cook said:

It seems that if you're going to burn coal, anthracite is the one you want.

 

Totally.  When I put in my solid-fuel, I was worried that there'd be a Dickensian black smoke/ash plume.  No--in fact, all one could see outside were heat waves.  But the smell was definitely not from woodsmoke.

 

I seriously doubt the coal in briquettes is wholly or mostly anthracite.  Having bought anthracite lump and tried to buy more, I discovered that it's expensive, and that USA doesn't have a lot of deposits of good anthracite.  Western PA seems to be the only place that still has much.  It's not really cleaner to start with, unless you buy it washed, graded and bagged.  Even so, merely jostling the bags tended to leave a filthy dust much like the dregs in briquette bags. I moved two pallets of leaky 55-pound bags once, and I looked like a chimney sweep.

 

I also think that if 40% of every briquette is coal, that's still a lot of coal.  I read somewhere that USA produced 883,748 tons of charcoal briquettes in 1997, and it must be substantially higher than that now.

[Dave the Cook]

You can use any type of coal to make briquettes. I was speaking of Kingsford, as I said. They cite a range for anthracite usage from 15% to 40%. The percentage probably varies depending on factors like the quality of the basic char.

 

"Cleaner" is a comparative word, and I not sure what you're comparing it to. I was comparing it to other types of coal, and its cleanliness relative to bituminous, subbituminous and lignite coal is provably true, despite your unfortunate experience.

 

Anyway, assuming the 883,748 tons number is correct (the number probably came from the National Barbecue & Grilling Association), that is a lot of coal (354,000 tons at the 40% rate; 133,000 at 15%), until you compare it with total anthracite production, which in the US was 2.6 million tons in 2019.

 

But all of this is leading us further away from the topic at hand. I use briquettes. The study @rotuts referenced, as un-nuanced as it might be, convinces me to continue using them.

 

[Laurentius]

3 hours ago, Dave the Cook said:

You can use any type of coal to make briquettes. I was speaking of Kingsford, as I said. They cite a range for anthracite usage from 15% to 40%. The percentage probably varies depending on factors like the quality of the basic char.

 

"Cleaner" is a comparative word, and I not sure what you're comparing it to. I was comparing it to other types of coal, and its cleanliness relative to bituminous, subbituminous and lignite coal is provably true, despite your unfortunate experience.

 

Anyway, assuming the 883,748 tons number is correct (the number probably came from the National Barbecue & Grilling Association), that is a lot of coal (354,000 tons at the 40% rate; 133,000 at 15%), until you compare it with total anthracite production, which in the US was 2.6 million tons in 2019.

 

But all of this is leading us further away from the topic at hand. I use briquettes. The study @rotuts referenced, as un-nuanced as it might be, convinces me to continue using them.

 

OK, I just don't want coal and the heavy metals therein under my food when open grilling and BBQ.  I'm happy using only hardwoods and lump charcoal.

 

I think most people have no idea there's up to 40% coal in Kingsford.  IMO, briquettes are sold mostly as a more convenient choice over more natural fuels.

[Dave the Cook]

OK.

[paulraphael]

On 9/15/2023 at 2:33 PM, AlaMoi said:

Cowboy brand is my fav as well, however - they produce in USA and Mexico

fyi . . .

the USA uses hardwood cutoff from Carolina furniture manufacturing, the Mexico product uses trees.

the bag of the Mexico production I bought had huge chunks - as in take a hatchet and chop them up so you can use them . . .

 

over the years any number of charcoal briquette makes have hit the boiling water pot due to their "ingredients" . . .

Kingsford:

Kingsford Charcoal is made from charred soft and hardwoods such as pine, spruce, hickory, oak and others depending on which regional manufacturing plant it comes from. That char is then mixed with ground coal and other ingredients to make a charcoal briquette. As of January 2016, Kingsford Charcoal contains the following ingredients:^[7][8]

• Wood char - Fuel for heating
  Mineral char - Fuel for heating
  Mineral carbon - Fuel for heating
  Limestone - Binding agent
  Starch - Binding agent
  Borax - Release agent
  Sawdust - Accelerate ignition

curiously, borax is banned in food products, it is toxic - but apparently when deposited on your steak by burning charcoal, is not a problem.

I just looked up the LD50 for borax (the amount, in mg/kg bodyweight that it takes to kill 50% of of unlucky ingesters). On rats, LD50 is 4500-5000mg/kg bodyweight. This means that table salt is about 50% more toxic to mammals. 

They do believe that borax may be dangerous to unborn fetuses. But it's probably moot, because borax is very flammable, and you're supposed to burn briquettes down to glowing coals before cooking. By the time you get to that point, there will be nothing present but carbon, with some inert limestone in the ash. 

 

And I think this is the crux of it. No matter what additives are in the briquets, they're gone by the time you put the food on the coals. This is why it's unsurprising that there weren't any taste differences between brands, or between briquettes and lumps.

 

The one situation that's sketchy is when the coals burn down in the middle of cooking, and you want to add more. This is where impatient people sometimes end up smoking food on top of briquette additives. I think this is the best use of lump charcoal: when you need to add more in the middle of cooking.

 

The part that surprises me is temperature. Nathan Mhyrvold and company reported that lump charcoal burns hotter and faster, simply because there's more air in it. I wonder if they and Cook's Country tested different types.

 

Edited September 22, 2023 by paulraphael (log)

[rotuts]

@paulraphael 

 

excellent point re :  adding fuel mid cook.

 

if I were doing this sort of thing now :

 

briquets are :  cheaper , burn longer  ( possibly hotter ) easier to use 

 

possibly less waste .

 

and no decreeable taste difference if the B's are used at the ash stage .

 

a lump or two of real wood ( dried  ) added for smoke and flavor.

 

burning wood ( dried or dried-soaked ) give you white smoke .

 

the particles in the white smoke might not be the healthiest 

 

when ingested.

[AlaMoi]

given the number of briquette makers and all their formulas

and

given the various woods and mixtures of woods used by various lump makers

. . . .

on any given day one "researcher" / "tester" can "prove" any of them burner hotter or colder than any of the other ones.

 

btw, not many sources agree that borax is flammable.

[Dave the Cook]

No, borax is not flammable, but there's little of it in briquettes to start with, and even less by the time it's packaged for sale, because it's only used to promote release of the briquette from its mold.

 

But I agree with this: 

1 hour ago, paulraphael said:

No matter what additives are in the briquets, they're gone by the time you put the food on the coals. This is why it's unsurprising that there weren't any taste differences between brands, or between briquettes and lumps.

 

And this is worth thinking about:

2 hours ago, paulraphael said:

The one situation that's sketchy is when the coals burn down in the middle of cooking, and you want to add more. This is where impatient people sometimes end up smoking food on top of briquette additives. I think this is the best use of lump charcoal: when you need to add more in the middle of cooking.

 

Two charcoal configurations come immediately to mind. They require the user to rely on a significant quantity of unlit charcoal to keep a fire going for a long time: the Snake (there are a few variations of this) and the Minion Method. Now, the way you know that briquettes are ready for cooking is that 1) they've developed a coating of ash, and 2) the smoke they emit is colorless or very light blue. So how do these methods work, if the charcoal is bypassing at least the first of these conditions? One theory is that proximity to already lit charcoal dehydrates and pre-heats the unlit coals. Regardless, the success of these methods demonstrates that it is possible to add unlit charcoal to an already burning fire without screwing up your cook. (Of course, if you have sufficient experience, you can always light additional briquettes away from your fire and add them after they've developed the ash coating.)

 

I'm not sure what to make of the Myhrvold claim, because he's an award-winning BBQ cook, because he's right so often, and because he seems immune to received wisdom. It's true that controlling air flow is a key to maintaining temperature control, and it seems so obvious that lump contains more air that perhaps he didn't see a need to test it. It's hard for me to imagine, however, that the difference in the amount of air in the fuel matters more than the amount of air surrounding the fuel, which is bound to be much greater in volume.

[AlaMoi]

"But I agree with this:  "

. . . and the research to support that is  . . . . . where?

[rotuts]

when I mentioned the nuance issue w ATK//CC

 

they prefer to offer simple results. : Temp //Time // Cost // Waste  ie product purchased , but u unusable.

 

and what surprised me : Taste.

 

the transfer of volatile chemicals , associated health risks of either product 

 

is not something Im guessing is up their ally to analyze or comment on .

 

but those issues are well worth bringing up .

 

Wood that is not turned into carbon has a lot of volatiles transferred when ignited.

 

and hardwood is very different than softwood .     

 

I was surprised to learn briquettes manufacturers in different areas 

 

use components that are readily available , thus cheaper than imports :

 

softwood in briquettes would be a concern .    think creosote in your chimney 

 

or on your burger. from using Pine .

[Dave the Cook]

54 minutes ago, AlaMoi said:

. . and the research to support that is  . . . . . where?

 

Okay, I'll backpedal a little and admit to a bit of limestone (toxic only at very high levels), and (possibly) a tiny bit of boric acid.