I prefer lump for grilling, but use briquettes for smoking. Do people use lump even for an indirect setup and smoking on the Weber? I find that the lump tends to catch to quick and burn too hot, or it doesn’t want to catch and burns out. So you have to start the pieces in a chimney, whereas briquettes you just add one and it will catch at a steady rate.
Answer to your first question is yes. Even for indirect.
As to the second part, I haven’t found that and I don’t like the idea dumping additional glowing charcoal on a fire when I have food on that’s going to catch all of the ash and dust. Like I said, I never used a chimney. We bought one but it still has the label on.
As to lump vs briquettes, it depends on who you talk to. If you look at Meathead’s site, he’s all for briquettes. He says they’re more consistent, burn more evenly, and provide the most predictable heat. He says that it’s basically all carbon and you needn’t worry about non-wood smoke. What he doesn’t say is that all the filler and binder remains and has to be cleaned out. You end up with as much ash as you had charcoal. And you can’t re-use the pieces. He says don’t use lighter fluid. Then Myron Mixon, who’s won plenty of competitions, says lighter fluid is fine as long as you let it all burn off. Both of them are supposed to be experts, so as always, you have to find out for yourself.
The lump charcoal will contain different pieces of wood - some branches and some bark. And if there’s any moisture, you’ll have sparkles for a couple minutes. Sometimes you have huge pieces that you need to break up. But the lumps burn much cleaner. You have a fraction of the ashes to deal with afterwards. And you’re generally dealing with an average temp of all the pieces, not the temp of each specific piece, so I don’t understand how you can claim that one style provides a more predictable heat. Lump burns hotter than briquettes in general, so if you’re smoking, just damp down more. I’ve gone to competition BBQs to see what people are using. A lot of them are using lump charcoal and they’re not having any problems. Some use briquettes and then they throw in some additional hardwood for flavor.
I’m far from an expert on long cooking times for things like brisket, but I’ve made plenty of ribs, tri-tip, pork roasts, turkey breast, and other things that require several hours. We used the Weber kettle with hardwood lump charcoal and things came out just fine. I rec’d a half bag of briquettes a couple years ago because the guy was moving. I hated them and ended up tossing most of them out.
You can regulate the temperature just as easily with lump as with briquettes, they’ll start just as readily, and you have less clean up.
