PatioDaddio
Babbling Farker
Review: Kingsford® Competition vs Stubb's® Briquets
Note: Please excuse the formatting. It looks great on my blog, but here,
not so much. If you want to see the pretty version, just click the link
above.
All-natural charcoal briquets have become increasingly popular over the
past few years. That's especially true in the world of competition
barbecue. This style of briquet is popular because it's essentially lump
charcoal in briquet form. You get the high heat of lump with the
convenience, uniformity, and predictability of a briquet.
Both the Kingsford® Competition and Stubb's® Briquets have been on the
market for nearly three years now, but the Stubb's® product is new to me.
I've been seeing quite a bit of banter about it on the various barbecue
forums that I frequent, so I thought that it's time that I put these
products to a briq-to-briq showdown.
As in my previous side-by-side charcoal reviews (the others are linked at
the end of this post) I wanted this comparison to be as fair and impartial
as I could make it. I don't have a laboratory, but I am an engineer, so I did
the best that I could in a home setting. I ran side-by-side tests of two
brand new off-the-shelf bags of each product. As you will see, I've
weighed and photographed each product so that you can see exactly what
I saw.
Let's see how these products compare.
I first weighed various quantities of each product. This will help quantify
the bang-for-the-bag of each. It will also let us see how much of the
product is left as ash, as we'll see at the end.
1 Briquet: 5/8 oz
5 Briquets: 3 3/8 oz
10 Briquets: 6 3/4 oz
1 Briquet: 1 oz
5 Briquets: 5 oz
10 Briquets: 10 oz
For the burn test, I punched two aluminum pie pans with an identical
pattern of holes. I wanted to use a method that would contain the ash for
a final weight.
I then arranged each of the briquets in each pan as similarly as I could. I
used 12 briquets in each, in layers of six, four, and two. I put a single
Weber wax starter cube in each pile.
I lit each cube and took pictures at various intervals.
From here on the Kingsford® Competition briquets are pictured on the left
(top), and the Stubb's® on the right (bottom).
Note: If you're interested, the temperature when I started the burn was
39º and the humidity was 84%.
Houston, we have ignition!
5 Minutes
10 Minutes
15 Minutes
20 Minutes
30 Minutes: 633º
30 Minutes: 702º
At 30 minutes I started taking temperature measurements. I used a
TW8060 two-channel thermocouple thermometer that was provided by the
great folks at ThermoWorks for the purpose of this review.
This thermometer, like their incredible Thermapen™ is dead-accurate, and
with a range of -328 to 2372°F it seriously blows the doors off of the
infrared thermometer that I used in my previous reviews. The long
industrial probes allowed me to measure the temperature just above the
coals where your food sits.
I stopped taking pictures at 120 minutes, but I continued reading the
temperatures out to 180 minutes.
35 Minutes: 478º
35 Minutes: 539º
60 Minutes: 466º
60 Minutes: 424º
90 Minutes: 520º
90 Minutes: 341º
120 Minutes: 232º
180 Minutes: 140º
120 Minutes: 205º
180 Minutes: 92º
Here's a chart that shows the temperature readings of each product over
time. The horizontal axis is time and the vertical shows the temperatures.
What about ash? Well, the results were surprising. The Stubb's® briquets
produced nearly 250% more ash by weight than the Kingsford®
Competition briquets. I was also surprised at the density of the Stubb's®
ash. As you can see in the picture above it held its shape fairly well, as
opposed to the Kingsford® ash which collapsed.
1 7/8 oz
4 5/8 oz
The bottom line is that, while the Stubb's® product starts stronger, it
loses its firepower more quickly and produces far more ash than the
Kingsford® Competition briquets. There's more product by weight in each
bag of Stubb's, but there's also much more that goes to waste.
I hope that you've found this review to be informative and helpful.
Obligatory Disclaimer: This is not a paid endorsement. It simply reflects
my honest findings and opinions.
-----
John
Note: Please excuse the formatting. It looks great on my blog, but here,
not so much. If you want to see the pretty version, just click the link
above.
All-natural charcoal briquets have become increasingly popular over the
past few years. That's especially true in the world of competition
barbecue. This style of briquet is popular because it's essentially lump
charcoal in briquet form. You get the high heat of lump with the
convenience, uniformity, and predictability of a briquet.
Both the Kingsford® Competition and Stubb's® Briquets have been on the
market for nearly three years now, but the Stubb's® product is new to me.
I've been seeing quite a bit of banter about it on the various barbecue
forums that I frequent, so I thought that it's time that I put these
products to a briq-to-briq showdown.
As in my previous side-by-side charcoal reviews (the others are linked at
the end of this post) I wanted this comparison to be as fair and impartial
as I could make it. I don't have a laboratory, but I am an engineer, so I did
the best that I could in a home setting. I ran side-by-side tests of two
brand new off-the-shelf bags of each product. As you will see, I've
weighed and photographed each product so that you can see exactly what
I saw.
Let's see how these products compare.
I first weighed various quantities of each product. This will help quantify
the bang-for-the-bag of each. It will also let us see how much of the
product is left as ash, as we'll see at the end.
1 Briquet: 5/8 oz
5 Briquets: 3 3/8 oz
10 Briquets: 6 3/4 oz
1 Briquet: 1 oz
5 Briquets: 5 oz
10 Briquets: 10 oz
For the burn test, I punched two aluminum pie pans with an identical
pattern of holes. I wanted to use a method that would contain the ash for
a final weight.
I then arranged each of the briquets in each pan as similarly as I could. I
used 12 briquets in each, in layers of six, four, and two. I put a single
Weber wax starter cube in each pile.
I lit each cube and took pictures at various intervals.
From here on the Kingsford® Competition briquets are pictured on the left
(top), and the Stubb's® on the right (bottom).
Note: If you're interested, the temperature when I started the burn was
39º and the humidity was 84%.
Houston, we have ignition!
5 Minutes
10 Minutes
15 Minutes
20 Minutes
30 Minutes: 633º
30 Minutes: 702º
At 30 minutes I started taking temperature measurements. I used a
TW8060 two-channel thermocouple thermometer that was provided by the
great folks at ThermoWorks for the purpose of this review.
This thermometer, like their incredible Thermapen™ is dead-accurate, and
with a range of -328 to 2372°F it seriously blows the doors off of the
infrared thermometer that I used in my previous reviews. The long
industrial probes allowed me to measure the temperature just above the
coals where your food sits.
I stopped taking pictures at 120 minutes, but I continued reading the
temperatures out to 180 minutes.
35 Minutes: 478º
35 Minutes: 539º
60 Minutes: 466º
60 Minutes: 424º
90 Minutes: 520º
90 Minutes: 341º
120 Minutes: 232º
180 Minutes: 140º
120 Minutes: 205º
180 Minutes: 92º
Here's a chart that shows the temperature readings of each product over
time. The horizontal axis is time and the vertical shows the temperatures.
What about ash? Well, the results were surprising. The Stubb's® briquets
produced nearly 250% more ash by weight than the Kingsford®
Competition briquets. I was also surprised at the density of the Stubb's®
ash. As you can see in the picture above it held its shape fairly well, as
opposed to the Kingsford® ash which collapsed.
1 7/8 oz
4 5/8 oz
The bottom line is that, while the Stubb's® product starts stronger, it
loses its firepower more quickly and produces far more ash than the
Kingsford® Competition briquets. There's more product by weight in each
bag of Stubb's, but there's also much more that goes to waste.
I hope that you've found this review to be informative and helpful.
Obligatory Disclaimer: This is not a paid endorsement. It simply reflects
my honest findings and opinions.
-----
John
