Royal Oak Briquets

[The_ogre25]

Are the royal oak briquettes better then kingsford? I mainly mean in terms of ash production and if they are natural binders. I usually use lump but wanted to try these to see if I could get extended cook times.

[stinkpickle]

I have a bag but haven't opened it yet. Maybe I'll try it out next weekend...

[SmokeyBear]

I'm currently using a bag. I haven't used it enough for a true comparison, but it seems they are more prone to crumble. I'll probably stick with Kingsford.
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[stevo]

I have used both. Kingsford is better IMO. Can't realy elaberate but I am a die hard Ford guy!!!! Ford Powerstroke......
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[necron 99]

Royal Oak used to be the Red Wiggler of briquets (remember the 'Cadillac of Worms?). Used to be 100% hardwood, said so right on the bag. This used to be my first choice in briquets.

It appears Royal Oak is just another mineral coal blended briquet now - a party to the lawsuit the widow of the now-deceased Weber Grill chef is pursuing (Kingsford is also a party to that lawsuit). Note the Royal Oak briquet bag only says 'Premium' now, nothing about hardwood. "Premium' means exactly what now? (I have no idea personally.)
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[The_ogre25]

Yeah thats what I thought. I got a good look at a bag today and did not find anything about wood.

[Harry Nutczak]

The very few things I know about rancher briquettes is that it is 100% wood-char with Yucca starch used as a binder. That is it, no funky additives like most others.

I do not see any reasons to use a briquette if a quality lump is available to you.

There is alot of crap added to many brands of briquettes, Alot of the additives are things you really would not want to cook with for fear of chemical saturation of your food. Lime is used to make the ash white, Lime does not burn so there is a bulk of your ash, Nitrates are added to aid in ignition, and other crap to keep the burn slow & stable.

I think burning newsprint for a fuel would be less toxic!


The mineral coal that kingsford uses is not the super clean-burning anthracite coal, it is a brown sub-butiminous (SP?) coal. the same stuff that is responsible for mercury emissions and fish consumption advisories in most inland lakes and parts of the oceans.
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[necron 99]

Nature's Hardwood briquets are an alternative to OCC Rancher, at least in my area. They produce less ash and burn hotter IMO, and also have no funky additives. Similar briquets can be found under brand names like Picnic, Frontier, Wicked Good, Duraflame, and I think Nature Glo (I'm not positive on the last one). I like the way I can access the MSDS for Picnic brand products easily on-line, and I've been hunting their briquets to try (thus far without success).

My POV is if you have a decent briquet available and briquet is a personal preference, there isn't a need to exclusively use lump charcoal. A bag of natural briquets that havent been pulverized in transit typically yields far less small chips and dust fines than a typical equal weight bag of lump charcoal in my experience. If I use just Nature's Hardwood products as an example, standard shelf pricing at Winn Dixie shows I can buy a 9 lb. bag of their briquets for $4.99, or I can buy a 6.6 lb. bag of their lump (or Nature's Mesquite lump) for $4.99. Breakeven charconomics say the natural briquets would have to be greater than 30% binder (and other non-wood char ingredients, if any) by weight for the lump to be a better buy based on wood char content of the two forms (assuming 100% wood char for the lump - nothing 'funny' in the bag of lump like rocks). I don't think this is the case using the MSDS for Picnic brand charcoal as a go-by; I haven't looked up the bulk denisty of pulverized wood char vs. yucca or corn starch binders to compare, but it seems reasonable to assume these briquets are less than 30% non-wood char by weight. Also, I don't recall ever finding things like rocks in any bag of charcoal briquets I've ever bought, and I can't say the same for lump - the one bag of Fire King lump I tried had a rock the size of my fist in it for a product sold by weight. I've found smaller rocks in about half the various brands of lump I've experimented with using in the past year.

I think my new BBQ Pro bullet smoker will actually work better with natural briquets like OCC Rancher than with lump charcoal when using the Minion method , at least when also using the 'Piedmont Pan' approach for the water pan. I really had to crank WAY back on inlet air flow on my first cook with it using a mixture of OCC Rancher & B&B Oak lump, and pecan wood chunks. I was on the ragged edge of smoldering with the pecan wood I was using mixed with the charcoal while keeping 'low and slow' cook chamber temperature.
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[Big Daddy Woo Woo]

We use Sam's Choice briquets. We have been told by more than one authority that they are made by Royal Oak. They are 60% larger, 4.62 a bag, and have no impurities for binders in them. I have cooked on friday night (practice) with kingsford and then used Sam's the next day cooking and could tell that Sam's was MUCH better. In the Party or Chubby, I can cook 5-6 hours on about 9 pounds of charcoal at 225. I use a guru as well, so that helps out with burn time. Just my .02 worth. Until we have bad luck, Sam's Choice it is!
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[stejvg]

Wally's which is about 1/2 mile from me only caries Sam's Choice, I wasn't sure whether to try it or not but if you say it is made by RO i'll give it a try.
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[necron 99]

The 'premium' Royal Oak briquets in their standard red bag are't free of funky additives, I don't think. I tried a 9 lb bag a few years ago when getting back into outdoor cooking again. they were very gritty and i didn't like the smells given off when lighting them. OCC Rancher is the closest thing I've found for what I remember Royal Oak in the red bag with '100% Hardwood' on the red bag used to be like.

The Nature-Glo, Wildfire, Kroger, and some other briquet brands (maybe including the Sam's Choice?) were made by a company called Hickory Specialties, that Royal Oak bought out at one point in time. Those products were free of funky additives at least at one point. Big Orson has reported good results using Kroger brand briquets, others have mentioned a briquet at Meijer without funky additives also. This might be where the Sam's Choice briquets are made as well.

There's been a bit of news on the web on another forum that a brand named Big Briq is coming back, evidently Stubb's BBQ will be selling their own brand soon as well. These are reportedly made from Cowboy material without adding funky additives (similar to Duraflame briquets?). That might also be a source for larger size briquets without funky additives.

http://www.bbq-brethren.com/forum/showthread.php?t=44278
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[tnbarbq]

I strongly prefer Royal Oak lump over Kingsford anyday. A lot less ash and better flavor. You can also use Best Choice lump. It's made by RO and under $5 a bag.
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