We were contacted by In Zone, the company that brought you the Big Steel Keg grill. They have come out with their own brand of lump charcoal and asked us to do a review. What's appealing about this brand is that it is going to be sold in Home Depot stores. From a post on the Bubba Keg bulletin board: "Currently Home Depot is the only retailer selling TrueCue. This is a rolling replenishment, so we will be moving into stores as the existing brands sell out. Eventually we will be in about half the Home Depots in the United States, concentrated in the Southeast and across to the Southwest." Catch that? Lump charcoal will be available in about half the Home Depot stores. That should be welcome news for many folks who struggle to find lump charcoal.
So, we hopped on down to our local Home Depot and sure enough, there it was. Two pallets of True 'Cue charcoal. We picked up 3 bags and headed home. When we opened the first bag, we noticed that the bag is quite substantial and sturdy. This should help prevent broken bags, leaks, and charcoal all over the place. Dumping the contents onto the sorting sheet we found a very very good mix of sizes and almost no chips and dust. The 2.3% chips and dust by weight is very low compared to other brands. Here's how the various sizes break down:
| Large |
1.6 pounds |
18.0% |
| Medium |
3.9 pounds |
44.8% |
| Small |
3.1 pounds |
34.9% |
| Chips/Dust |
0.2 pounds |
2.3% |
|
|
|
| Total |
8.8 pounds |
|
|
While sorting the charcoal into the various sizes, however, we noticed that quite a bit of the charcoal was not thoroughly carbonized. More about this later.
It took 5 sheets to start the charcoal in our chimney starter test, which is high compared to other lump charcoals. The charcoal is relatively hard to start and the fire spreads relatively slowly. While burning in the chimney, there was very little sparking and no popping. The smell of the burning charcoal was a very strong woodsy smell. More on this later, too.
In our maximum temperature test, the charcoal was able to burn at 935 degrees which is high compared to other charcoals we've tested. And again there was very little sparking and no popping while the charcoal was burning full tilt. When we run this test, we let the charcoal in the chimney starter get roaring away and then we dump it into a medium Big Green Egg. We add more charcoal to bring the charcoal up to a certain level, then let it burn with the vents wide open. Once again we found the fire quite slow to spread and get going. And once again, we found the smoke to be very strong.
Next we ran our burn time test and the charcoal only burned an average length of time compared to other brands we have tested. When we lit the charcoal with a MAPP torch, we finally got some popping and sparking, but not very much. Nonetheless, you should exercise care when using a MAPP or other type of torch to start lump charcoal. During the burn test, we were once again struck by the strong smoke and how long the charcoal produced smoke during the test. There's no getting around it, this charcoal has a strong smoke. We could smell the smoke all around our house, which is unusual.
Finally, True 'Cue charcoal produced a large amount of ash. If you look at the volume of ash as an absolute amount, this charcoal produced the third highest amount of ash of any lump charcoal we've tested. Even when you look at the volume of ash as volume per hour of burn time, this charcoal produced the fifth most ash of any lump charcoal we have tested to date. It just produces a lot of ash.
It seems that the charcoal is not getting adequately carbonized. As you can see from the photo down below (and the "enhanced" photo in which we bumped up the contrast and saturation in order to make the uncarbonized charcoal stand out), a fair amount still resembles wood in appearance rather than charcoal. This probably accounts for the strong smoke, the long lasting smoke and the average burn time. (Instead of burning a pound of carbon, you are burning a pound of volatiles and carbon.) We ran into this once before with a brand where the owner said he deliberately didn't take the kiln to as hot a temperature as most charcoals in order to get more smoke. Evidently, the same thing is going on here.
So what rating to give? The maximum temperature and the size distribution are great. However, it burns only an average amount of time, it's hard to start, and it produces an amount of ash that barely escaped the Very High category. And then there's the smoke. The smoke is probably a lot stronger than most people would like and could very well drive some people away altogether. As a result we give it our Above Average rating.
