Defective charcoal?


 
P

Pappy Farrell

New member
Purchased a brand new bag of Kingsford comp from Costco. Two cooks in a row! No matter my efforts it would top out at 350-400 in temp. Vents wide open, ash pan clean, full chimney that was all ashed over.

Could it have been poor storage before it got to Costco?
 
I used the K comp and like it, always pegged my lid vent therm at 500.
Have you checked you're therm lately??

Tim
 
Did another cook tonight with regular Kingsford. Same issue. Took Tim's advice and stuck my Thermapen in the top vent hole......I think I have problem with the Weber therm. Seems to be off a good 80 degrees. This is my first charcoal grill, so still learning.

Thanks for the advice. Are the Weber therms easy to swap out?
 
This is not the first thread I've read about charcoal not meeting standards (smoke, temp, lighting, etc) here and on other sites lately. There may be a quality issue these symptoms point towards.

...but probably a thermometer issue.
 
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Is the weber thermometer one of the adjustable kind? Some have a nut on the back and you can turn it to recalibrate the thermometer. It's a good feature, but sometimes it gets turned accidentally.

Bill
 
I bought 2 -20lb bags of Kingsford Charcoal to go to a Dutch Oven Gathering. We had 15 people cooking 2 to 3 pots each & it seemed my charcoal had more ash than normal. I havent had good lucking with Kingsford cooking with my dutch ovens latley but ok in Weber kettle. John
 
John Willems said:
I bought 2 -20lb bags of Kingsford Charcoal to go to a Dutch Oven Gathering. We had 15 people cooking 2 to 3 pots each & it seemed my charcoal had more ash than normal. I havent had good lucking with Kingsford cooking with my dutch ovens latley but ok in Weber kettle. John
Click to expand...

As to the OP, I haven't had any issues with K Comp yet, and I get it whenever it's on sale at Costco and I make it over that way. Good stuff, it burns quite hot, and there's something wrong if it won't.

However, as to John's post above, no surprise, there. In my experience and from what I hear from a lot of folks nowadays, regular Kingsford has to have some of the most over-rated "quality control" there is. Most of the time, it just has too much filler crap, and the briquettes will literally quite often just die on my grill in spots, without heavy drippings and with open vents. Not all the time, but enough to be quite annoying, and I don't have that problem with other charcoal. When my last year's stock up stash from one of the big HD sales is finally gone, I'll be just fine with it.
 
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