This brand of lump charcoal first came to our attention when we saw an individual posting to numerous
Facebook groups about how it was all big pieces, burned a long time and produced little ash. You know.
The same sorts of things that the manufacturers all say. So we bought some so we could see how it
really performs. We ordered it from Amazon and it arrived fairly quickly and in good shape.
GrillHunx comes from Mexico and is made from mesquite and oak. The map at right shows where Mexico
is, in case you didn't know. The charcoal comes in a very tough woven plastic
bag, much like the blue tarps you can buy in any hardware store. And the bag needs to be tough. As
we will see, the pieces are large and could easily pierce a paper bag.
So, as usual, we open the bag and dump it out on the ground for sorting and inspection.
We found no scrap wood, no trash except for one small piece of white plastic strip which no doubt
came from the white bags they use to package the charcoal for shipping to the bagging plant.
As as far as size goes, indeed, the
overall size distribution is heavily weighted towards larger pieces.
| Large |
12.2 pounds |
60.9% |
| Medium |
6.1 pounds |
30.2% |
| Small |
0.8 pounds |
4.1% |
| Chips/Dust |
1.0 pounds |
4.8% |
|
|
|
| Total |
20.1 pounds |
|
|
Over 91% of the bag is medium and large pieces, and there are almost no small pieces. If you
have a small cooker, this charcoal will require some hammer busting to fit pieces into your
cooker. The 4.8% by weight of chips and dust was Very Low (
)
compared all other brands tested.
Next comes the lighting test where we see how many sheets of newsprint it takes to get a fire going
in a Weber chimney starter. Surprisingly, it only took 3 sheets to light this charcoal which is
Very Low () compared to all other brands. The smell
of the charcoal was a pretty strong wood smoke smell, typical of mesquite. We'll discuss the sparking
and popping that occurred during lighting a bit later.
In our maximum temperature test GrillHunx burned at 1150°F, which easily gets it into the top
10 hottest burning charcoals we have ever tested. So needless to say, this was Very High
() compared to all other charcoals. Also, the
fire spread fairly quickly and the charcoal didn't take very long to hit that maximum
temperature.
We'll discuss the sparking and popping that occurred during lighting a bit later.
As for how long GrillHunx burns, well, it let itself down a bit in this test.
The burn time was only Average (
)
compared to other charcoals. We usually report on what it was like lighting the
charcoal with a MAP/Pro torch, but we'll discuss the sparking and popping that occurred
during lighting with a torch a bit later.
Our final test is to measure the volume of ash produced by the charcoal. The amount of ash
was quite high, ranking High (
) compared to
other charcoals.
Before we get to giving our rating, you will have noticed we repeatedly put off talking about
sparking and popping until "a bit later." Well, it's now "a bit later", so let's talk about
sparking and popping. There was a lot. A lot. While burning in the chimney starter, the
sparks and pops were non-stop. While lighting with a MAP/Pro torch, again there was
a lot of sparking and popping. What was most concerning was the maximum temperature test
where we are burning the charcoal with the bottom vent wide open and the daisy wheel removed
from our medium Big Green Egg. The tower of sparks leapt about 14 feet into the air. Sparks
were shooting out of the bottom vent as far as 8 feet away from the cooker. Granted, this is
burning at very hot temperatures, but in general you need to be aware of this behavior. We certainly
wouldn't leave a cooker unattended until we knew the fire had settled down and the sparking had
died down. The following video shows the sparks coming out the top of the cooker:
