Oh well, the briquettes are rare and often more expensive here. They do burn more evenly, but that’s about it. Cheapo charcoal here is lumps. By lumps you mean something that looks like this photo I found online, right?

This is my goto for when I just want to get the grill up and running quickly because I’m hungry. If I’ve got plenty of time, I chop up some alder logs that I’ve got for heating my furnace anyway, and then add some apple logs. I don’t have a lot of apple trees and I don’t cut them down willy-nilly so unfortunately I can’t do apple-only lol. Plus the apple logs are much tougher to get burning so they need some assistance.

The grill itself is made out of a big old propane tank (which ironically has never been used for grilling in this household - only for the gas range) and has a chimney and stuff so while it’s not fancy and I can’t control air intake or temperature well, I at least know the flow direction of the smoke and can play around with different woods to maximize smoke from the good stuff hitting the meat