Thom, Yea, the stumps are the way to go, the branches burn too quickly and like you said, don't produce enough BTU's. We use stumps and full stump pieces and they burn for hours. We probably use 5 or 6 of them per BBQ. Not too bad for the amount of food we cook and the amount of time we are cooking. We get some really good slow buring wood which makes it very nice to use, and it smells great, lots of smoke.