Here at BBQAroma, we always get excited when any new, natural barbecue fuel that gets passed into our burning little hands. So we thought, why not test them out!
Our tests are unsophisticated and basic in approach, not meant to find the best of the best but rather what passes as quality and ideal for the backyard charcoal barbecue. Please don’t expect us to call out a winner, but this is more to show what to expect.
Initial testing we focused on ease of lighting charcoal using just a small amount of firestarters. We feel here that the majority of people can do without chimney starters, heat guns, blow torches, electric element starters or much worse, dousing charcoal with liquid accelerants.
Let’s say that the biggest problem most novice barbecuer’s find in starting charcoal, is the understanding of how airflow works in their barbecue. Of course, not all barbecues are the same and not all of us share the same patience in getting their fire started.
So before we begin this series of tests and discussions, let us explain two ideas here – One is that there is a difference in how charcoal is used as fuel in a Low’n’Slow smoker barbecue compared to Hot’n’Fast barbecue Grill and…. – Two, open charcoal grills work differently to hooded charcoal grills. But let’s simplify all this and run our first charcoal test in an open charcoal grill, looking pretty much at the ease and effort required in lighting the charcoal.
Our early experiment with 3 open charcoal grills, basically revealed that shallow depth charcoal grills have ample airflow around to feed the burning charcoal. The assumption was that having airflow below and in the base of the grill, would show different burn rates.
Using 1 kilogram of Australian Gidgee charcoal in each grill and starting with just 2 cubes of wood/wax firestarters in each pile, we can definitely see that airflow beneath the charcoal didn’t actually accelerate or hampered the start-up rate. In essence, all 3 piles with identical charcoal lit at the same rate with the firelighters burning freely, with a visible flame under each pile.
Interestingly, we continued to track the surface temperature of each pile once well lit over a 3 hour period. The charcoal grill with the flat base and no airflow did burn at a lower temperature in comparison to the others but held its burning surface temperature for longer. The other two grills had more surface temperature fluctuations, but on average the other 2 grills burned in a similar way. Our observation is that ash formation plays a role in how quickly or hotter charcoal can burn, with the fact that it can limit airflow to the burning fuel. From this, we also saw that the need to monitor the rate of the rising surface temperatures from 12-15 minutes in when the firefighters burn out. 
In conclusion, as an initial control burn, natural lump charcoal takes less than 30 minutes from start to reach high searing grilling temperatures. In the case of the flat bottom shallow grill, once the ash formed on the burning charcoal, it created an insulating effect due to the airflow restriction scenario occurring. This would explain why that open grill didn’t have a higher peak temperature but holding better temperatures over the 3 hours of burn time. In this test, it certainly further indicates that Australian Gidgee charcoal would also be ideal for use in Low’n’Slow charcoal-fuelled smokers. Certainly, we will do a test, later on, to show its performance in low airflow smokers so stay turned into our blog as further tests are on their way…