Well, we have our first charcoal from Hawai'i to review! We were contacted by the manufacturer who resides on the island of Maui about doing a review of Ono lump charcoal and we have to admit we were looking forward to this. After all, The Naked Whiz spent three years growing up on the island of O'ahu, so it was a nice surprise to find out that Hawai'i is a source of lump charcoal!
So, where is Hawai'i? A number of people think it is off the coast of California, but in acuality it is out in the middle of the vast Pacific Ocean, on the same latitude approximately as Mexico City. (We know that because on the ship sailing to Hawai'i, they warned the passengers about sun exposure, noting that we were a lot further South than we might have thought! But we digress.)
Hawai'i is a chain of islands, or more correctly, an archipelago. Ono Charcoal is located on the island of Maui, as indicated on the top map at right. More specifically, they are located in Kihei, (which according to Wikipedia is a "census designated place") on the western shore of Maui. Nope, we didn't make that up.
Now, you may ask what kind of wood could they be using for charcoal in Hawai'i, and perhaps wouldn't it perhaps be destroying a fragile ecosystem? Well, the charcoal is made from a wood called Kiawe (pronounced kee-ah-vay) which is in the mesquite family. It turns out that the presence of this species of mesquite in Hawai'i has a very interesting story. Kiawe was introduced to Hawai'i in 1827 by a French priest, Father Alexis Bachelot, who had been sent to Hawai'i to establish a Catholic mission. Before he left Paris, Father Bachelot pocketed (supposedly absent-mindedly) a few of the seeds from the Royal Gardens during a farewell party. When he arrived in Hawai'i, he planted the seeds in front of the Catholic Church on Fort Street. The tree that grew is the forebearer of all the Kiawe trees that currently grow in Hawai'i. (Sadly, the original tree died in 1919.)
Kiawe spread so quickly that in only 13 years, it was the principal shade tree if all of Hawai'i. Today it is used as a cover crop to prevent erosion, the flowers are a source of honey, the seed pods are used as feed, and the wood is prized by woodworkers. (Click here for a photo of kiawe wood. Click here for a photo of kiawe leaves and seed pods.) Oh, and they make charcoal from it, too. Today, according to the manufacturer, Kiawe is the traditional Hawaiian Luau charcoal used at backyard BBQ’s as well as by gourmet chefs around the world.
And one point of clarification before we start the actual review. On the bag, you will find that it says "Created in Hawaii" as well as "Product of Mexico." The raw wood does indeed come from Hawai'i, but it is then shipped to Mexico where it is converted to charcoal and bagged before shipment to the United States.
So with that build-up, lets go to the testing. As usual, we started out by dumping the contents of a bag onto a plastic sheet for sorting, photgraphing, etc. Anyone who is familiar with mesquite charcoal would probably not be surprised by the distribution of sizes we found: some very very large pieces along with a moderate amount of medium and small pieces. You can see the distribution by weight in the following table:
| Large |
5.0 pounds |
34.5% |
| Medium |
5.2 pounds |
35.9% |
| Small |
2.7 pounds |
18.6% |
| Chips/Dust |
1.6 pounds |
11.0% |
|
|
|
| Total |
14.5 pounds |
|
|
You should notice immediately that the bag was about 1/2 pound underweight. We brought this to the attention of the manufacturer and they assured us this must be a one-off mistake. We did subsequently weigh the second bag that we had, and it was just over 15 pounds. The second bag also contained even larger pieces than the first bag. Your average back-yard cooker would need to bust up the large pieces with a hammer in order to use them. This is easy to do, just a bit messy. The percentage of chips and dust was average compared to other charcoals, but towards the lower end of the scale when compared to other mesquite charcoals. (We will be making these dual comparisons as we progress as we feel many readers consider mesquite to be different from other hardwood charcoals. However, ultimately the final rating will be based upon comparisons with all charcoals.) Finally, there was no scrap in the bag, one small pieces of uncarbonized bark and a piece of string in one of the bags.
On to the starting test in which we measure how many sheets of newspaper it takes in a standard Weber chimney starter to get a fire established. Ono charcoal took 2.5 sheets to get going. This is very low compared to other charcoals, and about average for mesquite charcoals. In the chimney starter, the fire was a bit sparky, but not too much popping was going on.
Next we conducted our maximum temperature test. We were able to get this charcoal up to 887 degrees, which is average compared to other charcoals and also average compared to mesquite charcoals. The fire spread quite quickly with quite a bit of sparking. With the vents wide open there as some ash coming out the top vent, but no grit. And there was very little popping.
Now, about the smell of the smoke. We decided to try to compare the smell of the smoke to that of some regular mesquite from Mexico. We brought in a second opinion by getting a fellow ceramic owner to do some sniffing with us. We allowed him to express his opinions before we expressed ours. We both finished smelling the smoke before either of us said anything. We both came to the same conclusion, that the Ono charcoal had a slightly milder and more pleasant smell than the mesquite from Mexico. In addition, we cooked some racks of lamb using Ono charcoal and the taste was quite nice. So we'll repeat our opinion that you shouldn't be afraid to be cooking with mesquite if you like smoke flavor, and you certainly shouldn't be afraid to cook with kiawe.
In our burntime test, Ono charcoal burned an average amount of time compared to other charcoals, but above average when compared to other mesquite charcoals. While lighting this charcoal with a MAPP torch, there was a lot of sparking and popping, so be very careful in using any type of torch to light this charcoal. (However, using the MAPP torch was the only time we saw much popping.) And finally, the ash produced by this charcoal was high compared to other charcoals, but only average when compared to other mesquite charcoals.
So in the end, we felt that while this charcoal doesn't compare too favorably with many of the non-mesquite charcoals, it was better than many of the mesquite charcoals that we have tested. If you want mesquite-like charcoal and especially if you want charcoal used in Hawai'i at luaus, this would be a good choice and thus we give it our Above Average rating.
