We put The Good Charcoal Company to the test and here’s what we discovered on this new entry into the charcoal market. The Good Charcoal Company charcoal is available at Sam’s Club and just recently became available at Home Depot online. The average MSRP price for a bag is $9.99-$19.99. Their charcoal comes from the Namibian bush in Africa. It’s made from Acacia, a denser wood than oak and hickory.

We tested the Good Charcoal Company charcoal in a live fire cooking test. Using a Weber Smokey Mountain (18 in) to smoke a pork butt in low and slow fashion. The charcoal was lit in in a chimney and we used the minion method to try and optimize the smoke time. The first thing I noticed upon physical inspection of the charcoal is that the pieces of charcoal are very small in size. I wondered if the bag I was using was perhaps on the bottom of a pallet and the charcoal was crushed or failed in some other fashion. In order to confirm or deny this speculation a search of other people using The Good Charcoal Company charcoal across various social media was conducted. After reviewing many photos from a large sample of users, it was determined this is the true size of the charcoal. The charcoal lit easily in a chimney and with a torch. In both scenarios the temperature of the charcoal reached an acceptable level of high heat. However, this also proved to be the biggest downfall in regards to the charcoal maintaining its integrity for longer cooking application. Due to the size of the charcoal pieces, it burned through the lump at an exceptionally high rate. During the cooking process of our test pork we had to remove the entire top of the Weber Smokey Mountain and add an entire new load of charcoal to the fire ring twice. This proved to be cumbersome and naturally increased the overall cook time of our cook. I’ve cooked on a variety of charcoal smokers with many different types of lump charcoal and this proved to be the quickest burning charcoal I have ever used in my experience. The one positive I would give this charcoal in regards to its burning process is that the temperature stayed perfectly set between 250-275 degrees during active cooking. No major spikes occurred during the cooking process which proves the charcoal does burn at an even rate. With that being said, the only decline was with the termination of the burning process as described earlier in this paragraph.

The Good Charcoal Company charcoal fell short in our long smoking test scenario. I would not recommend using this charcoal for cooks in bullet or barrel type smokers and after testing The Good Charcoal Company charcoal the best practical use of this charcoal would be for short cooks on kettle type cookers or used to start log fires in offset type smokers. The company does have a mission of giving back to communities by sponsoring and supporting barbecues for people experiencing food related insecurity which is highly commendable.