A buddy brought a bag over for a turkey smoke before Thanksgiving and it went alright for that, but I wanted to try it again before I bragged it up too much. So I picked up two more bags at Atwood's for my smoke yesterday, two 20lb bags for $28. I smoked a 10lb an 8lb brisket and six racks of pork spare ribs in my Brinkmann TMLE, about nine hours in 20-38deg weather, I didn't even use 20lbs of the stuff!
Temps held steady as long as I stayed on top of it, fed it every hour, it wasn't terribly hard to recover when I let it go to long, unlike Royal Oak, which ran temps all over the place and was a bear to get it caught back up when run low.
Fairly consistent sizes, considering it is lump, which helped with even burning.
Yes, there was a lot of dust and quite a few small particles, I tried lighting it with a chimney, I wouldn't recommend doing this as the small pieces tend to fall out the bottom putting embers everywhere!
Overall, I was really happy with it, and suggest anyone that's had issues and been put off by Royal Oak to give it a try at least once. I sure plan to use it more after my two good experiences.
