Well, the good folks at Wicked Good Charcoal have done it again and brought to the market another blended charcoal comprised of several species from South America. Before anyone brings up rain forest destruction, we would point out that the manufacturer of this charcoal is pursuing certification from the Forestry Stewardship Council. (For more information on the FSC, visit the FSC website.)
So, what's up with the new Weekend Warrior Blend? Well, the Competition Blend from Wicked Good Charcoal is a hot-burning, long-burning, low-ash charcoal. It's also one of the harder to light charcoals on the market. Weekend Warrior Blend is meant to be a hot-burning charcoal, but perhaps not as long-burning or low-ash as the Competition Blend. But most important, the Weekend Warrior Blend is meant to be easier to light. So let's see how it did.
First of all the charcoal contained no scrap, no rocks, no funny stuff. As you can see from the following table, the amount of chips and dust was exceptionally low. Most good charcoal seems to be in the 10% range, while the worst are up to 25% chips and dust. We also dumped out a second 22-pound bag in the course of our testing. This second bag had only 4.2% chips and dust! This is, again, exceptionally low. (Editor's note: We feel that if this charcoal can come all the way from South America to Maine, survive the trip from Maine to North Carolina via a package delivery service, and still arrive in such good shape, that the problem isn't jack-booted thugs in Wal*Mart stomping the bags in the back room like we often hear. The problem with charcoals full of chips and dust is the manufacturer not willing to load their bags with good charcoal. Kudos to Wicked Good Charcoal for achieving this quality of product.)
While the table shows that a little over half of the bag was in the "small" category, most of these pieces were on the bigger end of the small range. In other words, if anything from a marble to a golf ball were considered small, most of the small pieces were golf balls. So, overall, the size distribution was quite good. (Note: the distributors have informed us that a change is being made to increase the percentage of larger pieces.)
| Large |
2.9 pounds |
13.3% |
| Medium |
6.2 pounds |
27.8% |
| Small |
12.0 pounds |
53.6% |
| Chips/Dust |
1.2 pounds |
5.3% |
|
|
|
| Total |
22.3 pounds |
|
|
Ok, so how did the lighting test go? We performed the test twice and both times it took 4 sheets to get the charcoal started. This is about the average, and easier than the Competition Blend which took 5 sheets to light. There was very little popping or sparking in the chimney starter as the charcoal lit and burned. You can hear some crackling going on, but there were no sparks flying out of the chimney starter. The smell of the charcoal as it started burning seemed to us to be a sort of cross between the typical perfumey smoke you can get from tropical woods and the more woodsy smoke you get from American hardwoods. The smoke was mild and pleasant.
When we started the charcoal with a MAPP torch, there was some sparking, but since this is blended charcoal composed of several species of wood, the amount of sparking depended on which piece of charcoal you were lighting at the moment. So, we'll repeat our standard warning that you should exercise care if using a MAPP torch to start charcoal.
Once lit, the fire was pretty quick to spread and it hit a maximum temperature of 890 degrees relatively quickly. This is near the top of charcoals we have tested. This is certainly adequate for any high-temperature searing you would want to do. We also had occasion to do some additional burning of the Weekend Warrior Blend and some of the observations we made confirmed that this is a hot burning charcoal if you give it the airflow. However, like all charcoal, if you control the airflow you should have no trouble maintaining low temperatures. There was very little sparking or popping while it was burning with high airflow.
The burntime was average and the ash production was very low.
All in all, this new blend stacks up very well against other charcoals. So this charcoal targeted for the weekend warrior gets our Recommended rating.
NOTE: If you are more inclined to use briquettes than lump charcoal, you may wish to check out our product review of Wicked Good Charcoal's Weekend Warrior Blend Briquettes. They are made from the same blend of woods as the Weekend Warrior lump charcoal!
