Today when cleaning out my Kamado, I noticed that there were a few small pieces of what seemed to be very hard clay amongst the burnt coal. Now I know for sure that I only put charcoal in the fire box before hand, so I'm wondering how/why this is happening?
I use a red gum lump charcoal that I get from BBQs Galore and have gone through 2x 15kg bags of it, but it has not always happened after each cook. Though it does happen when I re-use already burned charcoal.
It'll be in the bag with the charcoal, they pick it up in the scoop when they get the charcoal off the ground....just means the charcoal is being made and bagged without much care.
Chris
Common Sense is so rare these days it should be a Super Power!
What Chris said.
I get the odd one and sometimes you are unlucky to get the last few bags that the bob cat has scraped up from the bottom.
Ive seens pics of commercial blokes making charcoal in dirt pits with tin layed on top so it does not surprise me.
Not such a big deal but annoying when you weigh one of those rocks and compare it the the same weight piece of char
If trees screamed when we cut them down, We wouldn't. If they screamed all the time we would. http://www.aussiecue.com.au
Not only can bits of dirt/clay/stone get caught up when extracting the charcoal from the pit, but also can occur when the manufacturer uses water to cool the charcoal. The water mixes with the dirt/clay in the pit and sticks or fills gaps in the charcoal. Shouldn't happen if they use a charcoal kiln instead of a pit.
Some unscrupulous manufacturers will bag wet charcoal to get to the packaging weight, then it dries in transit and weighs far less when it arrives. As bag as finding dirt/clay/stones in a bag can be, the worst we've come across was 2kg of charcoal dust in an 18kg bag.
