Digital Shaman
All Star
Charcoal all day everyday.
Do y’all cook with charcoal or propane?
- Thread starter F*ckthemkids
- Start date
dora_da_destroyer
Master Baker
Both for different applications. Smoking meats, charcoal grill or pellet smoker. Quicker grilled foods - thighs, veggies, seafood, burgers - propane unless the charcoal grill is out for other meats.
dora_da_destroyer
Master Baker
Lump wood charcoal >>> *
Much better than briquettes
But y’all don’t know shyt about BBQ in the UK.
Same to you, sir
Let me see if I can share just 2 pics in this thread w/o it going haywire.
Can you share some more details about this? I saw a video where on a very small scale they ignited a bunch of dried wood in a pit and then quickly buried it with dirt to suffocate flames and hold in heat
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one more ... I guess I'm have donate to the coli server fund again. I used to be in the top five donators, 
im making small amounts of charcoal from the red maple and birch that is shed from my yard and bamboo shoots. Stuff them all into a paint can and i can use other larger pieces of wood to light a fire. Build a fire around, or in my case, building a rocket stove that the paint can will fit in. The paint can has a hole/slit at the top so that the wood gases can escape and burn and what will be left over will be the charcoal, as long as the fire hits 500F for an hour or so. Thats not an impossible temperature to reach given that paper burns at 451F.
This charcoal will become bio-char, by soaking in my various composts for a couple days and then add to my garden beds. This will become a long release fertilizer. This is what makes the healthiest soils black
“God Made the Soil, but We Made It Fertile”: Gender, Knowledge, and Practice in the Formation and Use of African Dark Earths in Liberia and Sierra Leone
You can also use bones and shells in the same process. if you use something like oyster shells you can make life for cement, pottery, or plaster from it.
To make large "big-block" charcoal, you can do what you described, dig a large semi-deep (3ft) pit, stuff it full of dried wood, then put green/wet wood into a pile on top. And light it from the top. Lighting it from the top will force the fire to burn down, as opposed to up, and the paint can process will occur in the pit. The dried wood will be turned to charcoal because the heat of the fire will make the wood off-gas, burning up the wood gas will stoke the flames above it, since fire will not be able to travel under the wood in the pit because the earth is in the way.
You can cover it but it is a lot of work, normally when the big pile has reduced to roughly level with the ground, using water repeatedly will extinguish it and stop the carbonization process. This will also prevent the small charcoal particles from spontaneously combusting
making charcoal briquettes would take this charcoal, made on an industrial scale, pulverize it, bind and mold it into a briquette.
watch these vids for more info.
if you have a lot of land and are good with welding you can build a better retort (paint can process but with 25 and 50 gallon drums) but im not that savvy and i can't reliably make that much smoke within my HOA. I can make enough smoke to make this paint can stuff for my garden.
Bonus: in this video of how a certain people back Home made pottery is the same process for making charcoal. the way the pottery turns black is becuase the iron in the clay gets reduced instead of oxidized and turns black instead of red.
im making small amounts of charcoal from the red maple and birch that is shed from my yard and bamboo shoots. Stuff them all into a paint can and i can use other larger pieces of wood to light a fire. Build a fire around, or in my case, building a rocket stove that the paint can will fit in. The paint can has a hole/slit at the top so that the wood gases can escape and burn and what will be left over will be the charcoal, as long as the fire hits 500F for an hour or so. Thats not an impossible temperature to reach given that paper burns at 451F.
This charcoal will become bio-char, by soaking in my various composts for a couple days and then add to my garden beds. This will become a long release fertilizer. This is what makes the healthiest soils black
“God Made the Soil, but We Made It Fertile”: Gender, Knowledge, and Practice in the Formation and Use of African Dark Earths in Liberia and Sierra Leone
You can also use bones and shells in the same process. if you use something like oyster shells you can make life for cement, pottery, or plaster from it.
To make large "big-block" charcoal, you can do what you described, dig a large semi-deep (3ft) pit, stuff it full of dried wood, then put green/wet wood into a pile on top. And light it from the top. Lighting it from the top will force the fire to burn down, as opposed to up, and the paint can process will occur in the pit. The dried wood will be turned to charcoal because the heat of the fire will make the wood off-gas, burning up the wood gas will stoke the flames above it, since fire will not be able to travel under the wood in the pit because the earth is in the way.
You can cover it but it is a lot of work, normally when the big pile has reduced to roughly level with the ground, using water repeatedly will extinguish it and stop the carbonization process. This will also prevent the small charcoal particles from spontaneously combusting
making charcoal briquettes would take this charcoal, made on an industrial scale, pulverize it, bind and mold it into a briquette.
watch these vids for more info.
if you have a lot of land and are good with welding you can build a better retort (paint can process but with 25 and 50 gallon drums) but im not that savvy and i can't reliably make that much smoke within my HOA. I can make enough smoke to make this paint can stuff for my garden.
Bonus: in this video of how a certain people back Home made pottery is the same process for making charcoal. the way the pottery turns black is becuase the iron in the clay gets reduced instead of oxidized and turns black instead of red.
Hell yeah, I'm also in a hoa so figured it not feasible to really be doing it on large scale, but will def try your paint can method!
I use a chargriller akorn "kamado" (not ceramic but hella efficient) for regular bbqing, and have noticed sometimes the wood chunks I put in that never contact the the small fire inside will have basically turned to carbon after opening bbq the next day. I have accumulated a bunch of wood from trees in our yard, so hoped to get some use out of them. Especially like the biochar idea, and hope to incorporate into my plant projects in future. Also need to develop an area or enclosure for composting.
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IIVI
Superstar
Charcoal.
This cat's channel too
This cat's channel too