Switched to lump charcoal using KISS - no flavor. What's going on?


 
J

Jim H OH

New member
I've used my WSM 22.5 four times now. On the first two tries I followed the Weber manual using charcoal and hickory and turned out a great chicken and an awesome beef brisket.

Then I think I'm getting smart so I used Royal Oak lump charcoal and hickory on my next two (ribs and then pork shoulder) and I get absolutely no smoky flavor. I can smell it! I can see the smoke ring! But literally no smokey flavor. This forced my to drown my food in barbecue sauce!
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As much as folks talk about the flavor of lump, you'll actually get more smoke flavor from regular old Kingsford briquettes. Of course, a few folks say they don't like THAT smoke flavor. All I can say is that I rarely use lump in my smoker, and along with the charcoal....if you don't use wood it ain't no good.
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Hi Jim and welcome aboard !

Well the smoke taste develop quite easily in chicken. With pork and beef you can often use much more wood chucks ! How much wood did you use ? considering that, often, when i do ribs and shoulder i finish by adding a quite strong bbq sauce. So I need a lot of wood to taste it. take a look at the pictures in this post when i did a brisket :

chunks with brisket

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<BLOCKQUOTE class="ip-ubbcode-quote"><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-title">quote:</div><div class="ip-ubbcode-quote-content">Originally posted by Louis:
...often, when i do ribs and shoulder i finish by adding a quite strong bbq sauce. So I need a lot of wood to taste it. </div></BLOCKQUOTE>

Louis, your case is a great example of the aspect of wood selection in deciding how many chunks to use. I'm not surprised at all that you often use a lot of wood since maple and cherry both produce relatively mild flavored smoke, and neither, especially the cherry, smoke as long as the denser hickories or oaks. Of course, the other thing to consider is the level of seasoning, or the moisture content of the wood.
 
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