My Charcoal Panic...

[Mighty]

Had a real interesting panic recently with regards to charcoal recently...

Two bags of restaurant grade were delivered from Rectella and I duly opened one bag thinking I'd just use about half a bag for a test fire and check over the WSM.

I half filled a chimney starter on my grill rolled a newspaper donut and lit it underneath as per my usual M.O. Half a bag then went in the WSM basket for a minion method burn just to get an idea of how the big 57 unit was going to react during a real cook. I let the coals sit for a few minutes before building up the WSM and filling the water pan. Got everything together, lid in place and shut the bottom vents to "minimal" on all but one side to see where we got to. As it turns out we did have the expected air ingress problem, but not too bad and the temperature was fairly stable at 240/245 which I didn't think was too bad with nothing cooking to bring the temps down.

It was only at this point that I noticed a very distinctive ammonia type smell as I moved past the top vent. Now I've had the odd bit of a smell from some charcoal in the past when grilling but never enough to make me worry but this was acrid. It was so acrid that after going back to check a few times I felt really quite ill and had to go sit down for a while. So... was it something on the WSM or was it the charcoal or was it something else?

Well as I had a brisket and a butt on order from my friendly butcher and 25 people round for my Birthday two days later I really needed to figure this out... and quick! I left messages for all round good bloke "All Weather-Adie" and at Rectella, just desperate for a bit of advice to get this sorted. Adie offered the best of his knowledge and to help me out with other sources of charcoal if I couldn't get any other and Rectella put me on to Brian, their tech guy.

I opened another bag from Rectella and did another burn... same method only to soon find the same issue. Brian at Rectella was genuinely worried at this point and really doing his best to try to find out whether this was just a bad couple of bags or a bad batch. Now I have read that some charcoal imported from South America into the US had been causing some issues with interesting and acrid smells and began to wonder if this was the same issue. So what next?

A trip to Makro the next morning for another couple of bags which incidentally were from the same batch and Brian called me back to say he wanted to try a different lighting method... So a quick trip to the garage for some kindling and a lot of whittling with a knife to make some shavings and I had a little wood fire under the chimmney starter. The outcome: A perfectly good, clean, normal smelling burn. So was this the method of starting that was better or was it that this charcoal was better? So I let Brian know that we were definitely ok but we still needed to figure out what had been going wrong, so I fired up again late in the day using the original charcoal with the wood fire starting technique. Again it smelled 100% Aok.

Brian kept in touch through the whole process even after his normal working hours to make sure everything was going to plan because not only did he want me to be happy with their product but he really wanted to know what I was finding for their own future reference too. They have in the past noticed some slight ammonia type smell appearing when they've been testing and they've used newspaper as a lighting method, but of course this has been in an open environment and obviously it wouldn't be at anywhere near the concentrations that would be evident in an enclosed smoker.

After having tested again with newspaper and finding further problems I can only presume that there is a reaction occurring with something in the varnish/print on modern newspaper that actually starts a chain reaction in the charcoal burn so it doesn't go away even when all remnants of the newspaper have been removed, whereas with wood under the chimney starter I've had no evidence of the same type of smell at all.

Be interesting to know if anyone else has found anything like this and obviously I just wanted to thank Adie and everyone at Rectella/Bar-Be-Quick for their help and advice.

[JEC]

Interesting thread, thanks for sharing, I had noticed a funny smell with newspaper the one time when using it with my WSM, didn't come out in the cook but gave up with the paper mainly because of the mess from the ash, goes to show there's a lot more to lighting charcoal than just setting fire to it!!

[Steve]

I too have had this issue once, a few years back. Rectella were very helpful but we never got to the bottom of it. I use a gas ring to light my charcoal now and have never noticed it since.

[keith157]

I've never noticed, but I tend to use old briquette bags ripped up instead of newspaper in my chimney, instead of newspaper.

[Toby]

Just use a catering Gel tin (for chaffing dishes), gets the coals lit and reusable!

[bencops]

I just use firelighters, newspaper sends clouds of acrid smoke all over the neighbourhood

[Saucy Pig]

Recently moved to the firelighters for my chimney too. But now I stick one under my weber chimbley, fire and forget it. Works like a dream and £2.50 or so for 12 lights. I was a big advocate of newspaper lighting but living in somewhat of a wind trap I was having to relight quite often.

And with the amount of rubbish they put in newspapers these days (WAGS on my wagyu and Jordan on my jerk chicken) I'll be sticking with my lighters

[keith157]

Presumably you were cooking jerk chicken breast