Ok, I blame myself. I was advised to stay away from supermarket charcoal and instead buy specific brands (Globaltic, blue bags from butcher or garden centre), but just for an experiment, I purchased some lumpwood charcoal from Morrisons. It was 6.50GBP for a 4.5kg bag which seemed quite cheap.
The writing on the bag proclaims: "Pure lumpwood charcoal for the ultimate barbecue experience". It also claims to be responsibly sourced etc.
Rather than using just lumpwood, I mixed 50% briquettes and 50% of the lumpwood. The results were rather poor. The BBQ temperature didn't get above 250deg. By contrast, briquettes managed to easily heat up to 300deg after allowing 30min of smoking time before starting cooking. Not only that, the BBQ started loosing temperature less than one hour in. I managed to keep it going at 250deg for about 45min, but after that it was a loosing battle. By an hour and a half it was below 150deg. We managed to keep it going long enough to get dinner cooked, but barely.
So this is something of a disappointment. On the previous occasion when I just used briquettes it could be kept at 250deg for well over two hours, possibly as much as three. It was stayed at that temperature long after we had finished eating dinner. I was told that lumpwood burns out quicker and I was expecting that, but I was not expecting that it would burn out as quick as it did and at a much lower temperature, even though 50% of the fuel was still briquettes. I dread to think how this would have turned out if I had used only lumpwood?
Well this was just an experiment as I wanted to actually see and understand the difference, but is lumpwood generally such a poor fuel, or is it just because I purchased a cheap supermarket brand?
