Lump other than Royal Oak?


 
For me the best bang for the buck lump is Royal Oak. Tastes great, easy to get, and relatively cheap. I pay $10 for a 15.44lb bag, or roughly $.65/lb. What else do you guys use and how much do you pay for it?

other Lump I have tried:
- cowboy - IMO as good as royal oak but more expensive
- Char-Broil Center Cut - burns great, great sizes, not enough flavor for me. On sale I got it for the same price as royal oak, but returned 4 boxes since I didn't care for it.
- Kroger brand lump - forgot which one, but it was decent but still cost more than royal oak
 
My go to is Royal oak, But if where spinning a quarter side of beef it's lazzari mesquite at 14 - 16 bucks for a forty pound bag...great stuff and pretty much contestant in size.
 
I've been using B and B because that's what the closest store to me replaced Royal Oak with. I don't recall price but will edit this when I find it. I am happy with the results. It's on par with RO IMO.
 
I don't have a lot of options up this way, so it's RO or CB and I like RO better.
I saw Meijer had boxed lump from Russia, forget the brand name but it was pricey.
Tim
 
I bought some RO lump from Home Depot and it was nearly pulverized. Then our local Costco had a "Road Show" for Kamado Joe smokers and a deal on Kamado Joe lump charcoal. It's from Argentina, marked as organic hardwood, and many of the chunks are huge. I'd much rather have it too big and break it down than have little stuff fall right through the fire grate. I tried it and was so impressed that before the promotion was over, I bought 400 pounds at what worked out to 75 cents a pound. Lots of heat, lasts a long time (I've run the smoker for 24 hours on one filling more than once), and VERY little ash. I've done two overnight smokes in a row without cleaning out the ash - contrasted with KBB where I had to clean out the ash mid-cook.

The large wood lot where I get my smoking chunks supplies a large proportion of the restaurants in the Chicago area that use smoking wood. They also sell charcoal to restaurants. Their charcoal is made by RO, and the owner told me that although Kingsford bought out Royal Oak, they kept one plant making the real stuff, same as before the buyout. What he showed me looked much like the Kamado Joe stuff I have. When I run out of the Kamado Joe, I'll be trying that.
 
I've used RO, Carbon Del Sur, Cowboy and some others. Carbon Del Sur is $9.99/20lb bag and it works well enough for me.
 
Where I live you have to order to get the good stuff. If your going to order lump you might as well get the best "JEALOUS DEVIL".
The only other option is the Royal choke @ Walmart or Home Depot which varies greatly from bag to bag.
Besides its fun BBQ'n with the DEVIL. He has a life time of knowledge dealing with the fire down below. LOL
 
I use Best of the West Mesquite lump charcoal, not because I really like it but because its abundantly available here and pretty cheap. There is a bunch of pulverized dust and unusable small pieces in the bottom of the bag though so I don't know if it is as good of a deal as I think it is. I do like Royal oak lump but I have to go out of my way to get it.
 
My favorite brand was Full Circle but I haven't seen it around in years. I typically just go with Royal Oak if I'm going to use lump. I hear Cowboy is good but I had one really bad experience with a bagthat had pieces of plastic and rocks in it so I'm done with them.
 
best of the best.

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RO is not a dense lump like so many of the better ones, so you want to pick bags off the top of the pallet, that are soft and fluffy like a pillow.
Avoid the ones off the bottom of the pallet that are flat and compressed or look stepped on.

Tim
 
The price isn't great but I've heard Big Green Egg lump is made by Royal Oak. Quality is said to be better than the stuff Royal oak sells for itself.
 

 

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