We found this charcoal in a Publix store when visiting Hilton Head Island this past year. We were prepared to strap it on top of the car in order to get it back home for a review, but fortunately, it fit on top of all the other crap we have to take. Actually things were a bit tight since we now take our dog to Hilton Head, but we digress....
As far as the contents and size of pieces go, this was truly a tale of two bags. For reasons unknown, we had to open one of the bags to extract a sample, leaving the other bag for the sorting and weighing task. Since we had a bag open, we dumped it out to grab the quantities needed for the maximum temperature test and the burn time test. We were quite disappointed to find nothing larger than the small to medium size. Nothing big and nothing truly medium. Thus it was that we grumbled a bit as we dumped out the second bag for the official sorting only to find a marvelous distribution of sizes. This table shows the results from the "good" bag:
| Large |
2.0 pounds |
20.9% |
| Medium |
3.6 pounds |
38.4% |
| Small |
2.8 pounds |
30.4% |
| Chips/Dust |
0.5 pounds |
5.1% |
| Uncarbonized Wood |
0.5 pounds |
5.2% |
|
|
|
| Total |
9.4 pounds |
|
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Note that there was 5% by weight of uncarbonized pieces. This was quite high and if you combine it with the 5% small chips and dust, you end up with 10% of the bag not really being usable. However, the "bad" bag, having a lousy distribution, also had no uncarbonized pieces. So there you have the tale of two bags. But, 10% unusable ranks "low" compared to other charcoals, while 5% would rank "very low".
While sorting the "good" bag, we found one small rock and a small piece of charred paper. Otherwise, there was no scrap and no other funny stuff. (We didn't really sort the "bad" bag, but we didn't find anything funny in it.)
As for the type of wood used, we don't know for sure, but we suspect this is your typical blend of various American hardwoods.
In our chimney starting test, this charcoal took 3.5 sheets of newpaper to get going which is low compared to other charcoals. The smell of the smoke was the typical American hardwood smoke. While burning in the chimney starter, the charcoal sparked very little with no popping. When we used a MAPP torch to start this charcoal, we did get significant sparking and some serious popping, so as always, exercise care if using any type of torch to light charcoal. One other observation was that this charcoal seem to be smokier than most American hardwood charcoals we've tried. This was noticed when burning the charcoal in the chimney starter and there was no bark or other uncarbonized pieces involved as we had manually removed these pieces during sorting.
In our maximum temperature test, the charcoal burned at about 880 degrees which is only average compared to all other charcoals. And again, it sparked a little with almost no popping. The fire spread relatively quickly as the fire grew and came up to temperature.
When it came time to test the burn time, this charcoal did a great job and burned a very long time compared to other charcoals. And finally, the ash production of this charcoal was very low compared to other charcoals. So, in trying to determine what rating to give this charcoal we are a bit perplexed over the two very different bags we bought. If we could have taken the best aspects of both bags, Publix charcoal would have easily gotten a highly recommended rating. In view, though, of the fact that you just can't guarantee that you will be getting a good bag every time you make a purchase, we feel we can only give this charcoal our Recommended rating. Still, a very good charcoal.
