Crumbling briquettes

[Scantily]

Hello chaps,

This is probably a stupid question, but is it common for extinguished but semi burnt briquettes to fall apart and crumble?

I only ask as some cheap ones I got from aldi a while back did this when I was trying to recover any un/partially burnt fuel, I just put it down to them being cheap. But recently I've been cooking with supagrill wonder briquettes, and a good half a ring of perfectly reusable fuel just crumbled into dust, I managed to save a half chimneys worth by being careful. But any rough treatment and they just crumble! Quite literally money turning into nothing.

I use lump most of the time and I did use heat beads ages ago a few times but can't for the life of me remember how they performed.

[RobinC]

I mainly use weber briquettes and part burned ones are more brittle. If I'm cooking on my WSM I leave the part burned ones in situ and just add new fuel as required.

[BRUN]

Yea part burned ones can be brittle

[essexsmoker]

I reused weber long burns and they were very crumbly. Just have to be a bit gentle.

[Scantily]

I think perhaps I'm being too rough, I'm used to lump wood where you can give it a good shake to loosen the ash and used this approach the other day, no wonder they all fell apart. In the future, I'll just have to be more careful.

[essexsmoker]

I don't know but maybe the binders evaporate during heating so they fall apart after?

[Scantily]

Another thing I've noticed, when you see Americans shaking down their charcoal rings they don't seem to be particularly gentle and the briquettes still hold their shape, perhaps they're compressed more?

Has anyone used kingsford or any of the other popular US bbq coals?
Would be interested to see if they are different to ours.