Well if you love your Lump that is great but really Briquette are the best way to go. (Don't hate).
There are two aspects that we are looking for in our cooking: Heat and Wood smoke.
For heat we want easy control and stable temps. Everyone will agree that briquettes are best for that.
(Barring the extra ash, and good briquette have little more than lump)
The other is a good smoke, and here is the rub. The Lump enthusiast will tell you that their lump has better "smoke" and in a way they are right but for all the wrong reasons.
All Charcoal is wood (big pieces for lump or saw dust compressed for briquettes) that has been cooked in a low Oxygen environment. With the likes of Kingsford Briquettes this process is complete, that is all the wood has been turned to charcoal so you get very little smoke and long even heat.
With the Lump you get small pieces fully converted but some of the larger lumps are not fully converted so you still have some wood inside, this wood gives off the smoke. Great but no two bags are the same, some have oak, some have hickory, and some have old bits of a desk.
I believe that you want charcoal for HEAT, and you should add you own wood to flavour, not rely on Royal Oak etc. to give you the “Right” of even “Consistent” amount of wood in your cook.
Also remember that in lump you get all sorts of foreign objects, 3 rocks in my last bag, but I have seen bits of PVC pipe come out of some. I am sure there is different levels of quality control but you will always be at risk with lump. You also have a lot of dust (this adds to the weight of the bag but not to your cooking time or heat)
Further with Lump you are always trying to get consistent amounts of charcoal. Many people feel that the lump burn hotter, this is because when you first get it going you have lots of surface area with all those small pieces, but once they all burn up, your burning surface area drops and you get lower temp output.
If you want higher temps there 3 easy options,
1) more charcoal (it will be hotter, last longer and stay hotter)
2) move closer to the coals (either raise the coal bed/box, or drop the gill either way hotter temp and consistent
3) More air, burns more, burns hotter, briquettes still stay consistent longer
When I first started I drank the cool aid and burned Lump, No more. Each to their own and work with whatever is best for you but I believe that Briquettes beet Lump every day in every way.
Good luck to all,
C :-D
