Wicked Good Charcoal Briquettes

[ultramag]

I was curious if anyone else had tried this new product from the folks at Wicked Good Charcoal yet. I recently found a distributor in the Kansas City area and was actually after the Weekend Warrior lump to try in the BDS. While I was there he showed me the briquettes that he also carried and I bought a couple bags to try as well. They are all natural and the same as the Weekend Warrior lump, just in briquette form with a cornstarch binder.

This stuff is simply amazing!

I lit of a ring full of the WGC in the WSM at 1:30 am last night and cooked a 10½ lb. packer and baked beans and am just letting it go now to see what it will do. I am at 19 hours burn time right now and the intake vents on the WSM have never been more than 10-15 percent open after getting up to temp. I haven't even bumped the legs to shake the ash down yet. This usually becomes necessary at the 8-10 hour mark. The temp is cruising along at 239° at the moment. I will report back the final results someday when it finally quits on me.

FYI, this was an 11 lb. bag of charcoal and I used 20 Kingsford briquettes on the top of it and am doing a minion style burn. The following is a link to the WGC website.

http://www.wickedgoodcharcoal.com/

 

[brennan]

hmm, impressive. I'll have to see if I can find some of that out here in CA

 

[deejaydebi]

WOW that's quite a burn time. I will have to look around for some.

Thanks Chad!

 

[ultramag]

22 hours and 238°. I should have bought another brisket.

 

[brennan]

holy crap. I bet if you let that stuff go at full blast, you could turn out some awesome seared tuna

and thats all off of one load? You used a whole 11lb bag and 20 kingsford bruquettes?

 

[crewdawg52]

HOG TIE ME UP AND STICK ME IN LARD! Just gotta get me some of those!

 

[ultramag]

Yup, one load WGC and 20 briquettes Kingsford lit in chimney and spread evenly over the top. I have done virtually nothing to the WSM since firing up last night. Put on brisket, waited 12 hours and 45 min. then removed brisket. Never even opened the lid and got a good night's sleep last night. I set my ET-73 temp alarm to go off low end 210° and upper end 250° and slept until 10 this morning.

These are some dense briquettes. The physical size of the 11 lb. bag is suprisingly small. That's the funny thing, I actually used the 20 extra Kingsford briquettes because I was somewhat skeptic of getting the 14-16 hour burn I was gonna need out of that amount of charcoal.

BTW, 22 ½ and 231°. Oh my, I may have to crack open a vent or two.

 

[crewdawg52]

Very, very impressive. Checked out the web site. No dealers in Michigan, but they do deliver. Great info! So Chad, you dumped the whole bag in there and let 'er go? And did you use the lump or briquettes? In the first post, you just said "charcoal".

 

[brennan]

Still thats great, I'm gonna have to compare the time with my coals. I've got kingsford and some natural lump that I got at Trader Joes. I'm gonna mix em for my brisket smoke tomorrow so I've got the long burn from the kingsford, and the speedy warm up of the lumps.

 

[ultramag]

This go round is the briquette form crewdawg. Sorry for the confusion. I got some lump to try as well. I mainly bought the briquettes to see what kind of sear I could get on a steak in the Performer. After this experience in the WSM the other bag of briquettes just has to go in the BDS.

Can't wait to see what the lump form does in the BDS. I bought 10 22 lb. bags of it. Just really bought the briquettes as "ya ok, might as well check this out to I guess" kinda thing.

23 hours and 232°. I believe it's gonna at least make 24 hours. I really should sleep.

 

[crewdawg52]

Damn.......Again, very impressive. Hope Laura doesn't get upset when all these bags of lump and briquettes show up at the door...

 

[ultramag]

I guess I'm done now. At 1:30 am (the 24 hour mark) the vents were still about 10-15 percent open and the temp was 229°. In between 1:30 and 2 the temp started dropping and when it hit 220° I opened the vents to about 25% and the temp jumped up for a brief period to 226° and then started to fall again. I'd say for all intents and purposes it was done at the 24 hour mark really. I tried adjusting the intake vents first to 50% then wide open and it just kept dropping. At 3:15 it is 209° and slowly falling. That would be 25 hours and 45 mins.

I find it interesting that it pretty much stayed the same until the end and adjusting the vents had little to no effect. I am going to knock the ash down by tapping the legs and peak in the access door and see just what is in there.

 

[ultramag]

Well, that was pretty uneventful. I went out and pulled the access door and there is basically just nothing left. I tapped the legs and knocked down what little ash there was just to see what it would do. There was a few really small coals left and it had burned down to nothing without messing with it and knocking ash off the briquettes to keep from smothering the fire. I guess since there is not a bunch of filler to plug things up it just burns completely down. I would say the bag is 99% consumed.

IMO, this would be a major benefit to the ECB type bullets as smothering the fire is the biggest issue with that design. If anybody else has tried or tries it I would really like to hear the results.

 

[pigcicles]

Excellent post Chad. Thanks for the play by play showing the kick butt burn properties of the Wicked Good charcoal. I'll be looking for it myself.

Keep Smokin

 

[brennan]

That charcoal sounds...wicked good...

 

[smokyokie]

Excellent post Chad! You should offer to sell those folks your documented research and testimonial in exchange for free ccoal!

Tim

 

[plazdiddy]

ill chime in with my experiences using WGC briqs. theyre very very good; much lower ash byproduct and uber long burn. it actually became a little of a nuisance because i needed to wait a full 30 hours from start of cook till the last of the coals burned down so i could clean the side fire box on my CG. the way shipping works out, its only slightly more expensive than buying kingsford from the local market (yes, im in nyc where everything costs an arm and both legs) so its a no-brainer. i highly recommend it to anyone looking to do a long smoke with wood chunks to spice things up.

 

[peculiarmike]

Mag, where did you buy it?
Man could cook a whole hog on that stuff!

 

[smokyokie]

We must be bored and digging up old threads this afternoon?

Hey Chad, if you read tjis, bring me a bag or two when you come down. I'll either buy it from you , or maybe we can work a swap.

 

[deejaydebi]

Awsome! Set it and forget it charcoal! Time to dust off Baby Bink, give her a new paint job and try this stuff.

Does it take like regular charcoal? Nothing weird in it or anything?