Royal Oak Briquettes


 
Gary,

I used RO briqs for a cook this past weekend. I had 2 butts and a boneless blade roast, altogether about 22 lbs of meat. I had trouble getting the smoker up to temperature, due to the large amount of meat and also due to the fact that I half filled my water pan. I loaded the meat at about 150 as the WSM was coming up to temp. I only use my lid temp to monitor the smoker temp, but it never seemed to get as hot as I wanted it to. I also used a lot of charcoal, possibly due to the wind and the 22 lbs of meat. Although I did need to keep adding RO throughout the cook. In total I used 2 16.6 lb bags, and my butts were still no where close to being done. I had to run to the store to buy a bag of lump so I could get the temp up for the final few hours of cooking.

All in all, I didn't like the RO briqs. I didn't notice that they made any difference to the food than the Nature's Grilling briqs I normally use, but I did notice that they are a lot smaller and created a lot more ash than I'm used to.

I will try them again, mainly because I have 3 more bags, but my first impression was not good.
 
Thanks for your comments. That was a lot of meat and I know from this weekend the weather here was mixed. Where are you getting Nature's Grilling Briqs? I have not seen them around here but maybe there is someplace else I should be looking. The water will definately hold your temps back. You might want to consider a second dome vent mod for your smoker. It will help you to get up to temps quicker and you can always start closing one of them down a bit once you get where you want to be. I hit 300 degrees in 39 minutes with a 13 lb brisket this weekend. I was using a dry pan mind you.
 
I get them at Canadian Tire. Line herehttp://www.canadiantire.ca/AST/browse/2/OutdoorLiving/BBQAccessories/BBQTanksBriquettes/PRD~0851485P/Natures+Grilling+Gourmet+Hardwood+Charcoal+Briquettes.jsp?locale=en

Did my cook on Sunday, it was pushing 20 degrees C in November!! It was quite breezy out though. Thought I had the smoker sheltered enough, but the smoke coming out of it was whipped away pretty quickly. Thanks for the suggestion for the 2nd vent mod. My WSM will probably be put away for the winter soon I'll have some time to do a few mods to it
 
Thanks again. I did a brisket Sunday and when the wind picked up for a few minutes I lost 50 degrees in less than 30 minutes. The wind seems to be able to blow the heat right out of the smoker. I moved it and it recovered quickly but there is no question wind plays a huge role in time and temp.
 
Yesterday I got a call back from a rep at Royal Oak. Again, I related the question of the Premium briquet content to the Ultra 100 listed content of 100% hardwood charcoal. The rep said that basically ALL their briquets were the same (hmm, that's interesting). By email, she sent me the MSDS for Royal Oak charcoal. Here are some relevant extracts with a few comments:

TRADE NAME: Charcoal Briquets
BRAND NAMES: Royal Oak, Great Lakes, Grill Time, Nature-Glo, Ole Diz and private labels.
(Note: that the instant lite and Ultra 100 are not included explicitly in the list.)
DATE: 09/12/2011 SUPERSEDES DATE: 01/02/2009
MANUFACTURER: ROYAL OAK ENTERPRISES, LLC.
(Note: the date of this MSDS superseded an earlier one -- is this because these are the "new" briquets?)

Composition:
Char dust 75-80%
Limestone < 15%
Sawdust < 10%

POTENTIAL HEALTH EFFECTS:
INHALATION: Overexposure to the dust from briquet breakage may cause transitory upper respiratory irritation.
CARCINOGENICITY: Not listed by NTP or IARC. Not regulated as a carcinogen by OSHA.
(Note: I don't think any of us would argue that we don't want to breathe charcoal dust.)

DECOMPOSITION PRODUCTS: Product will burn and the products of complete combustion are oxides of carbon.

CALIFORNIA PROPOSITION 65: Not regulated under California Proposition 65.

So putting this all together, this is what I understand. Limestone (cement) and wood dust is mixed with hardwood charcoal dust (presumably with a little water) to make the formed briquets when dried. The limestone and sawdust are a binder which is less than 25% of the entire content which accounts for it having LESS ash than Kingsford but more ash than those that use 5% vegetable binder (Stubbs and Rancher/Trader Joe's). On heating, the binder breaks down (being calcium carbonate and wood dust) which leaves a less solid partially burned coal than the vegetable binder (which may be because that "cooks"?).

Anyway, I don't know of anything in these ingredients that suggest a problem and they don't smell bad when burned -- just not as "woody" as lump charcoal.

So I'm good with using "new" Royal Oak briquets. I'd also like to find the Ultra 100 version. And now I'll get on with the "testing" I promised -- but probably not until after Thanksgiving. Too much happening in our household right now.

Rich
 
It's also interesting that Royal Oak MSDS says it's not regulated under Calif. Prop. 65 while the Trader Joe's briqs have a Prop. 65 warning about the danger of combustion of wood and charcoal products.

Rich
 
Rich, follow up to my comment. Did an overnighter with new RO briqs.Overly full ring of charcoal. When I went to bed she was settled in at around 250. When I woke up it was 220 and going down. Looked in the chamber and it was mostly ash. Added more briqs . I've always had good performance with RO. Not real happy right now. This was after 12 hours of burn. Liked the larger size briqs a lot better :-(
 
Paul.
If you have a GFS close by, check them out. They used to sell the large RO briqs in 20Lb bags for a good price.
Not in the red RO packaging, but in GFS black "Food Service" bags.

Tim
 
Thanks Tim, I don't have much of a selection of charcoal to choose from in my area . Will check out GFS.
 
paul h said:
Rich, follow up to my comment. Did an overnighter with new RO briqs.Overly full ring of charcoal. When I went to bed she was settled in at around 250. When I woke up it was 220 and going down. Looked in the chamber and it was mostly ash. Added more briqs . I've always had good performance with RO. Not real happy right now. This was after 12 hours of burn. Liked the larger size briqs a lot better :-(
Click to expand...

Thanks for the info, Paul. That's about what I get with Kingsford, but I understand if you had better performance before. I'd like to know just what their change to "new" was, but I doubt we'll ever find out.

For me, I still like Stubbs and Trader Joe's better, but I hold off more comments until I can do the testing I promised. (Just got back exhausted from a 5-day round trip to upper Indiana. Everything in due time. :) )

Rich
 
Rich, will let you know when I get the larger size RO and try them out. Anxious to see if I get better results. Looking forward to seeing your tests.As I was typing this I thought "you know I had 40lbs. of frozen butt on the smoker. I wonder if it would have been different if the meat had been defrosted. Might not have taken as much energy to get to the cooking stage" Hummmmm. I had never run into this before.
 
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I would suspect that starting with 40 lbs of frozen butts would affect your fuel burn time. That's a lot of cold to absorb a lot of heat. Now matter how much energy the charcoal was pumping out, the cold butts were just sucking it up.

Maybe one of our physicists can tell us. :o

Rich
 
Rich, I agree with you but like I said I never had this problem before. I always cook my butts frozen. I 've never ahd a an issue with RO until the change in size.
 
Huh! That's intersting (that you've always done it that way). I'd have to agree then, on the briquettes.

I'm hacking away at my backlog. Taking a 5-day trip to Indiana, getting a new tablet to learn and switching over to gmail has NOT helped me get caught up -- but I'm getting there. No complaints, just saying why I haven't started on those comparison tests yet.

Rich
 
Next time I do a long cook I'll get some of those GFS RO Briqs and try them. Will let you know the results.
 
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