Can't say I notice "creosote" with lump charcoal, some S. American sourced lump may burn a little smokey early on. If you are using a mix of prior used lump and new lump I don't see that as an issue whatsover. If you are doing a low and slow you are better off closing the lid after 8-10 minutes and you have placed wood chunks, meat, etc in the cooker. Using an electric starter and cleaning the ash/debris out of the bottom grate for clear air flow I typical pull the starter at around 8 minutes and place wood chunk/s and additional lump in quantity to provide enough fuel with a decent margin of safety, ie can run a few hours past estimated finish time. Here is an example. You are right about waiting until the fire is raging to close and cook and it wastes your chunks and lump.

Existing lump from prior cook after clean out, this was after replacing a cracked firebox I kept cooking on for 4.5 yrs:

If you are using fire starters, chimney, whatever it is similar. Place the wood chunks on the glowing embers and add more lump on that. With the Primo I always place the meat on the grate first to avoid being smoked out by the chunks, you may have to do that last with BGE with no real divided firebox. No terribly right or wrong way to get it done, but I strongly prefer the first 45 minutes or so be at low heat, say 200, and letting a large blaze form defeats the purpose and takes more time. Hope this helps, best thing is make sure the bottom grate is clear and have good air flow which makes regulating the temps much easier.

I really do prefer high quality dense lump, like Wicked Good, mixed with less dense like BGE or Royal Oak lump which are both produced by RO, it keeps a consistent burn over a lonnngg time frame. Keep working at it, you'll find a happy medium/process and have good outcomes.

This post was edited on 10/8/13 at 3:30 pm