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We just happened upon this brand of charcoal at our local Harris Teeter Supermarket. This is a new product for them. As you can see from the photos below, the size distribution is adequate, although we all like to see a few large pieces in the bag. We did a search in the internet to find out what we could about this charcoal and we see that it is made in South America. It wasn't any surprise, therefore, when we burned it and the smell was reminiscent of Kamado charcoal and the Brazilian lump that we have been testing. It is a mild slightly perfumed smell, very pleasant. As far as lighting goes, this was very easy to light, requiring 2 and a half sheets of newspaper to get it going in our chimney starter. While it burned in the chimney starter, there was a small amount of popping, but virtually no sparks flying out. Another characteristic of this charcoal, which we discovered when we reviewed the Brazilian lump, is that much of the wood is pretty dense so it burns for a fair amount of time, slightly higher than average compared to other brands we have tested. This might be distinct advantage for those cooking in metal cookers where length of burn can be an issue.
09/11/04 -- Update To Our Original Review: The Original Charcoal Company contacted us and asked us to update our review since we have added a few new tests since we first reviewed this charcoal. We had a bag in the garage, so we hopped right to it. This particular bag of charcoal took 3 sheets of newspaper to start in our chimney starter test, which is in line with the 2.5 sheets we previously reported, so nothing new there. We now sort the charcoal into large, medium, small and chips/dust and this charcoal was on a par with most lump charcoals we test in this regard. We'd prefer to see less small and more medium pieces than what we found in this bag, but nothing to truly complain about. We also now measure the weight of the chips and dust in the bottom of the bag and this brand contained 10% chips and dust by weight, which is a wee bit better than average. One other new test we now conduct is burn time and ash production. This lump burned an average length of time and produced a high amount of ash compared to all the lump charcoals we have tested to date.
Incidentally, you can find this charcoal at Ingles Supermarkets, Bi-Lo Supermarkets, Fred's, Harris Teeter, Lowes Foods, IGA stores, and select KMart stores in the Southeast United States. The Original Charcoal Company is working hard to make this charcoal available in more and more outlets and should be commended for trying to make it possible to run down to the neighborhood grocery store and pick up a good bag of lump charcoal at a reasonable price.
07/30/05 -- Update: The Original Charcoal Company product has an all new look, as you can see from the photo above. To the right you see a photo of the old packaging. They have a new web site, noted below in the Contacts section, which is pretty slick. And finally, their new packaging is filled with new phrases and information, which you can find below in the Statements From The Bag and the Lighting Instructions sections.
08/20/05 -- Update: Since we had the new bag from Original Charcoal Company, we decided to go ahead and sort the lump and weigh the various size pieces, as we now do regularly for all our reviews. Here are the results:
| Large |
3.0 pounds |
29.1% |
| Medium |
3.1 pounds |
30.1% |
| Small |
2.9 pounds |
28.2% |
| Chips/Dust |
1.3 pounds |
12.6% |
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| Total |
10.3 pounds |
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As you can see, you get the full 10 pounds plus a little. The chips and dust have crept up from 10% to 12.6% which as about average. What's an improvement was that we found no uncarbonized pieces of charcoal, unlike a previous bag. We still give this charcoal our Above Average rating.
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