C4 rolls thicker again, and the extra bark changes how it behaves in a pot rather than making it worse. The finer grades give up their flavour in minutes. C4 releases slowly, over the length of a proper cook.
That makes it the right choice for anything that spends real time on the heat. In a curry that simmers for forty minutes, a C4 quill is still working at the end where an Alba would have given everything up in the first ten and gone limp.
It also means one quill flavours more food, which matters when you are cooking for a table rather than a cup.
This is not a lesser product. It is a different tool. We use C4 at home more often than we use Alba.
