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03/15/09 UPDATE: Another reader of ours has been able to confirm that this charcoal is "100% hardwoods from the Ozark Mountain area in the states of Arkansas and Missouri."
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We were alerted to this charcoal by a sharp-eyed reader who discovered it for the first time in Lowe's Foods. While we purchased our samples at Lowe's Foods, here is a link to a webpage on the Full Circle Foods website listing the various chains that carry Full Circle Foods: Full Circle Food outlets In our Quick Stats section, we say that the country of origin and type of wood is unknown, but we thought we would allow ourselves a bit of speculative luxury and suggest that this charcoal MAY be manufactured by Royal Oak. The following was printed on the bag:
We will leave it up to you to decide how accurate this guess might be! But we digress. When we opened the bag for sorting, we didn't find any scrap or really funny stuff. There was one small twig with leaves attached. Upon sorting the contents, however, we found a pretty disappointing distribution of sizes. Just a few large and medium pieces, a whole lot of small pieces, and 15.6% chips and dust, which ranks high compared to other lump charcoals. As you can also see from the following table, the bag contained a little over half a pound more charcoal than advertised:
| Large |
0.6 pounds |
6.6% |
| Medium |
0.8 pounds |
8.7% |
| Small |
6.5 pounds |
69.1% |
| Chips/Dust |
1.5 pounds |
15.6% |
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| Total |
9.4 pounds |
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We opened a second bag (we had to in order to get enough charcoal that we needed for our starting and maximum temperature tests) and the distribution was a bit better, with more medium sized pieces. But as you can see below, the second bag also contained a monstrous piece of uncarbonized bark.
In our chimney starter test, this charcoal was pretty easy to start, taking 3 sheets of newspaper to get going, which ranks low (low is good) compared to other charcoals. The smell of the smoke as the charcoal starts is like your typical American hardwood charcoal smoke. There was no popping and very little sparking while the charcoal burned in the chimney starter.
Next in our maximum temperature test, the charcoal burned at 1040 degrees which is very high compared to other charcoals. Again, while burning furiously, there was no popping and very little sparking. When using a MAPP torch to light the charcoal, there was some sparking and popping, so be careful when using any sort of torch to light this charcoal. We also noticed that when the charcoal was igniting, the fire was relatively quick to spread to the unlit charcoal.
Finally, in our burntime test this charcoal burned a long time ranking very high among all the charcoals we have tested. The ash production was low compared to other charcoals.
So, what rating to give this charcoal? It's easy to start, burns hot, burns very long and produces a relatively low amount of ash, all at a very reasonable price. The only real knock on this charcoal is that the size distribution is rather poor. Over 15% is unusable and the majority of the bag is small pieces. As a result Full Circle Lump Charcoal misses out on our Highly Recommended rating but does earn the Recommended rating.
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