Newbie Charcol Question


 
G

Glenny B

New member
Hi,

I'm a charcoal newbie and I'm just starting to get the hang of things. I've had one issue though - getting my grill up to high heat (500 degrees) for things like steaks.

here is what I have:
- A weber performer w/ gas starter 22.5 inches
- a weber chimney starter.

I've been filling the chimney starter to about half full (about 50 briquettes) and have let them burn in the starter until the top coals start glowing red. However, when I dump them in the grill (covering about half the grill using a three-zone cooking style) It seems that the temp only gets as high as 350-400 degrees.

Should I be using more coals?

Thanks,

Glenn
 
Welcome Glenn!

What Tom said, and what brand of coals are you using?

Plus, I would use a full chimney if I wanted higher temps.

PS, where do you live?
 
I have kept the vents open 100%. To be honest I haven't started experimenting with vent open/close other than to stop the fire.

As far as charcoal, I'm using standard Kingsford basically because we had a sale although I have a bag of lump charcoal sitting in the garage and ready to go for when we run out.

I will give it a go with a full chimney.

As far as where I live - Northwest side of Chicago.
 
Glenn,

Where are you measuring the temperature? At the dome? That's going to be quite a bit different than what you get at the grill surface (where it counts).

I sometimes like to put the charcoal baskets back-to-back, move them to one side of the grill, and fill them up. While you get less surface area for searing, you get the coals nice and close to the grill, and you have a nice indirect zone to finish cooking.
 
Try lump. If you want it hot get 2 lenghts of 1/4 inch stainless steel. I use 2 rotisserie skewers lay them across the edges of the kettle and let the lid rest on those so there is a gap between the lid and the kettle . I can get my kettle friggen hot that way.
 
Instead of waiting till the top briquettes turn red, when they get a light gray coat, use them. When the top is red hot, I find the bottom is on the way out.

As others said, I find lump burns a little hotter than briquettes. But I would test out a little more briquettes and/or not letting them burn so much before using them.

Or even put briquettes in a concentrated pile - I use fire bricks to force all my heating source in a little 6 by 6 spot on the grill.
 
I agree also with Thom, I do not wait until the coals in the whole chimney are red hot. I usually go with about 3/4 red hot then dump them into the grill, the rest will catch on. If I need a longer cook I lay down about 10 Stubbs briquettes first then pour the red hot Roayal Oak on top. Sort of my personal minion method..
 
Also, I might add to check your OE therm against a pot of boiling water...these things are notoriously inaccurate and variable.
Ditto on using a full WEBER chimney.
 
There are some great tips here. I'll add that not only does lump burn hotter, but faster as well. Your fire most likely will not last as long with lump - not sure if that matters. I'd advise not going the lump route right away and burn through a few bags of Kingsford first, and I'd also recommend always starting with a full chimney.

Don't over pack the chimney though - your bottom coals may be almost spent before the tops are grey. Usually once I see the top few coals showing a bit of grey, I dump. By the time the grates are hot and I start loading food, the coals are ready.

Don't worry about a bit of black still on the coal. Heck, Weber indicates you need to add unlit charcoal at certain points anyhow for longer cooking sessions.

Getting back to charcoal, Kingsford is consistent - and stick with the same type. If you start with Kingsford Blue, go with that. If you started with Competition, stick with that. Remove the charcoal as a variable while you get your methods down and learn how the grill behaves. Once you know the machine, know how to control temps, then play with all the different coals and wood you like.

Most importantly - have fun.
 
I wanted to thank everyone for their fantastic advice. I had some great success tonight. I used a full chimney and I went to the bag of lump (my first kingsford bag ran out last session).

I soon got up over 500 degrees. I even had some time to play around with the vents to control temp and cooked some medium heat stuff (veggies, chicken breasts) in addition to the large pork chops I was making.

Thanks again! this is really fun!
 
I use wicked good Briqs for longer smokes, but for everyday grilling I use a full chimney of Royal Oak lump. I make sure to select a my pieces so that I have a mix of large and medium in then dump as soon as I see the flames coming out of the top of the chimney. One thing I would recommend that really helped me was to save the coals from the last cook (you always end up with some left over if you close the vents as soon as you take the food off) and use those as a base to put the fresh coals on. This gets the fire a little closer to the grill and the hot coals above will get them going too.

This is from a cook n Sunday, measured not quite over the hot coals, but pretty close to them.

002.jpg


I got a pretty good sear on the steaks.

003.jpg


Hope that helps.
 
Glenny,

Around here the lump folks are almost dogmatic...not that there's anything wrong with lump. But, you can totally get to 550 with Kinsford, and I do it all the time with less than a full chimney.

Here's what you do:

1. Half to full chimney (I usually go 3/4) over your burner for around 5 minutes, bottom vents open.

2. When you see flames down in the chimney, but not on top), dump the coals into the grill or the coal baskets. You've just dumped the unlit coals onto the bottom and the red hot ones to the top.

3. Place the grate on the grill, close the lid, open the top vent 100%, and let her heat up to around 500 degrees.

4. Once at 500 or higher, close the top vents to 50%, take off the lid, clean the grate, and grill.

The whole process takes me 20 minutes or less. It's usually going on in the background while I'm prepping food. The grill often beats me.

Stan
 
Great advice from the guys, as usual. One of my best purchases was a stainless cake drying rack, a round one, that had 1/4 spacing and thin wire. i put it in my wsm on the charcoal grate and never had lump falling through, but the wire was thin enough to not clog up with ash. It's a good investment if you decide to start using a lot of lump. Of course there's not a thing wrong with Kingsford either. Long as you got something cookin' you've got 'er going in the right direction.
 
I got some firebricks from ACE for setting up indirect cooking. But I also use them to raise up the charcoal for cooking steaks.

Buy a second charcoal grate or use the one from your WSM. Put a couple firebricks on your charcoal grate. Then put the second charcoal grate on top of the bricks. Dump a full chimney of lit charcoal on the elevated grate. The coals will be about an inch below the top grilling grate. Leave a safe zone becuase it will be hot!

I'll take a picture next time I do this.
 
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