Let's not try to reinvent the wheel here or the lump. A simple retort is just that you cannot improve on it. A wannabe (REALLY??)pitmaster who pays $20.00 a pound for a prime piece of meat then searches for the cheapest charcoal or lump should have their hands severely singed. KISS
after using my home made lump for a week now, I can say its great.
I did use some Cowboy last night to start the coals in one of my verticals and when it started popping and sparking (like it always does when I light it) I realized that the home made lump does not do this. I had forgot about the fireworks show when using commercial lump
I did end up buying a 30 gallon barrel. After seeing how good this was working with the garbage can I decided to buy one since the garbage can isnt the best thing to use and wont hold up.
I can see myself making a lot of lump so I decided to go ahead and buy a 30 gal barrel
I stumbled across a deal I could live with. Its from Zoro tools online, the barrel was $50.99 with free shipping and a $5 coupon code from Retail-me-not, and no tax. And it came in 1 day!
How could it possibly cost you more to make it over buying it? The only trick is the 30 Gal drum. They just cut up ficus (I think it is anyway... Might be mahogany) log down the street into truckable sized chunks. I would say it is at least 5 years seasoned. I am going to ask the neighbors if I can haul off a couple pickup truck loads tonight. My neighbor gave me 2 nice new 55 gallon drums a couple nights back. Looks like an UDS and a CharKiln.