Anyone burning crushed acorn shells? Answer is Yes

[Don2222]

Hello

My neighbor gets tons of acorns every 2 years. I know if a whole acorn can contain moisture and if it was burned, then it would pop or explode. So if the acorns are crushed and dried, will they burn good? Would they still be too dirty?
If not, What is the best way to crush them and dry them?

 

[kinsmanstoves]

Never heard of them being burned. My lawnmower crushes them real good or is that chopped? I will stick with pellets and corn.

Eric

 

[Fsappo]

Why dont you try it and get back to us, Don?

 

[Snowy Rivers]

Should work fine

I have been burning Hazelnut shells (Filberts) for 18 years now in my pellet stoves and they do fine.

Dry the acorn shells and crush them so the largest pieces are no bigger than your little finger nail and youm should do fine.

The Hazelnut shells I burn are crushed and they work wonderful
I would expect a little more ash than the pellets leave but otherwise they should do fine.

Just make sure that the shells are DRY

Snowy

 

[SmokeyTheBear]

Don,

If the acorns are ripe you can crack them open and make flour out of the nut meat inside.

I'm sure you can dry and burn them, just remember you need an exhaust system that can handle corrosive combustion byproducts and be prepared for high ash and plenty of clinkers.

You might also want to be certain that there is no pesticide that was applied by air in the area. Some of the pesticide residues if burned produce "bad stuff".

I once looked at making some acorn flour, as I have many oak trees and lots of acorns on the lot.

Let us know how things go with your experiment.

 

[Delta-T]

Don,

If the acorns are ripe you can crack them open and make flour out of the nut meat inside.

I'm sure you can dry and burn them, just remember you need an exhaust system that can handle corrosive combustion byproducts and be prepared for high ash and plenty of clinkers.

You might also want to be certain that there is no pesticide that was applied by air in the area. Some of the pesticide residues if burned produce "bad stuff".

I once looked at making some acorn flour, as I have many oak trees and lots of acorns on the lot.

Let us know how things go with your experiment.

do you not have to blanch the acorns in water a few times first? I vaguely remember reading something about that.

 

[SmokeyTheBear]

Don,

If the acorns are ripe you can crack them open and make flour out of the nut meat inside.

I'm sure you can dry and burn them, just remember you need an exhaust system that can handle corrosive combustion byproducts and be prepared for high ash and plenty of clinkers.

You might also want to be certain that there is no pesticide that was applied by air in the area. Some of the pesticide residues if burned produce "bad stuff".

I once looked at making some acorn flour, as I have many oak trees and lots of acorns on the lot.

Let us know how things go with your experiment.

do you not have to blanch the acorns in water a few times first? I vaguely remember reading something about that.

I can't remember much about the process as I quickly came to the conclusion that it was a lot of work. One of these days when there is a bumper crop we might give it a whirl, likely there will be a reduction in the resident squirrel population. Maybe I should harvest some of them as well.

So here is one method: http://www.wikihow.com/Make-Acorn-Flour

We use a lot of flour, there is always close to 100 pounds in the house. We haven't bought any bread in the last four years. Yeast, flour, and other ingredients make homemade bread both cheaper and a lot better.

 

[heat seeker]

Our neighbor uses acorns for hog feed - they love it! It's very expensive to buy, so he's happy to rake under neighbors' oak trees. This year the crop was unbelievable! Under one tree, we must have gotten 4-500 pounds of acorns (big tree)!
Burning them seems like a good idea to me - just have to figure out how to dry and crush them.

 

[woodchip]

Our neighbor uses acorns for hog feed - they love it! It's very expensive to buy, so he's happy to rake under neighbors' oak trees.

In the New Forest, they put pigs out every fall to eat the acorns (called pannage here) so they do not get eaten by the ponies, the pigs love them, they are poisonous to ponies.

http://www.newforestnpa.gov.uk/pigs

Never knew about acorn flour, learn something every day here

 

[Don2222]

Should work fine

I have been burning Hazelnut shells (Filberts) for 18 years now in my pellet stoves and they do fine.

Dry the acorn shells and crush them so the largest pieces are no bigger than your little finger nail and you should do fine.

The Hazelnut shells I burn are crushed and they work wonderful
I would expect a little more ash than the pellets leave but otherwise they should do fine.

Just make sure that the shells are DRY

Snowy

Hi Snowy

Thanks so much for the info. Knowing what size to crush them to is half the battle!

Something like this Elite Nut Chopper should do the job!! What do you think??
from (broken link removed)

Product Detail
Prep foods fast with this electric chopper. Just press the button to chop, dice, mince, puree or grind up to 1½ cups of veggies, nuts, chocolate, or meat. Compact size stores easily. ETL listed. Dishwasher-safe plastic bowl/metal blade. 7¾â€Lx4¼â€Wx5¾â€H.

 

[Fsappo]

That would be a lot of chopping for a little fuel looks like. Should be a way to crush them by the bushel or something.

 

[Delta-T]

That would be a lot of chopping for a little fuel looks like. Should be a way to crush them by the bushel or something.

hammer mill? herd of buffalo? either/or.

 

[summit]

I bet a multi fuel unit's burnpot could handle it, but the auger might not: either you get them crushed too small, and get a fines jam, or too large and hard jam it.

 

[Fsappo]

That would be a lot of chopping for a little fuel looks like. Should be a way to crush them by the bushel or something.

hammer mill? herd of buffalo? either/or.

The cast of the view in clogs?

 

[heat seeker]

That would be a lot of chopping for a little fuel looks like. Should be a way to crush them by the bushel or something.

hammer mill? herd of buffalo? either/or.

The cast of the view in clogs?

Put them on the stage of Riverdance?

 

[heat seeker]

Our neighbor uses acorns for hog feed - they love it! It's very expensive to buy, so he's happy to rake under neighbors' oak trees.

In the New Forest, they put pigs out every fall to eat the acorns (called pannage here) so they do not get eaten by the ponies, the pigs love them, they are poisonous to ponies.

http://www.newforestnpa.gov.uk/pigs

That's interesting - I enjoyed the read. Thanks!

 

[Don2222]

Don,

If the acorns are ripe you can crack them open and make flour out of the nut meat inside.

I'm sure you can dry and burn them, just remember you need an exhaust system that can handle corrosive combustion byproducts and be prepared for high ash and plenty of clinkers.

You might also want to be certain that there is no pesticide that was applied by air in the area. Some of the pesticide residues if burned produce "bad stuff".

I once looked at making some acorn flour, as I have many oak trees and lots of acorns on the lot.

Let us know how things go with your experiment.

do you not have to blanch the acorns in water a few times first? I vaguely remember reading something about that.

I can't remember much about the process as I quickly came to the conclusion that it was a lot of work. One of these days when there is a bumper crop we might give it a whirl, likely there will be a reduction in the resident squirrel population. Maybe I should harvest some of them as well.

So here is one method: http://www.wikihow.com/Make-Acorn-Flour

We use a lot of flour, there is always close to 100 pounds in the house. We haven't bought any bread in the last four years. Yeast, flour, and other ingredients make homemade bread both cheaper and a lot better.

Hello Smokey

Here are some flour and pancake videos from acorn meat!!

Cooking With Tam - Acorn Bread (Part 1)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGjoTlzujYY

Cooking With Tam - Acorn Bread (Part 2)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TI8JN4_wKa4

Cooking With Tam - Acorn Bread (Pt 3)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X48zTVasE7o

Acorno Acorn Store in Burlington VT where you can buy Acorns and Acorn Flour. See pics below!!
http://www.acorno.com/acornflour/

Video to make Pancakes from Acorns using your blender!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=efEBIK1CmfY

 

[Don2222]

I bet a multi fuel unit's burnpot could handle it, but the auger might not: either you get them crushed too small, and get a fines jam, or too large and hard jam it.

Hello Summit

If Snowy Rivers can burn his nut shells in a Whitfield with no issues, then we can burn acorns with no problems!
They just have to be prepared properly as Snowy says!

 

[Fsappo]

Jeeze, for that money I'll start collecting acorns.

 

[SmokeyTheBear]

I bet a multi fuel unit's burnpot could handle it, but the auger might not: either you get them crushed too small, and get a fines jam, or too large and hard jam it.

Hello Summit

If Snowy Rivers can burn his nut shells in a Whitfield with no issues, then we can burn acorns with no problems!
They just have to be prepared properly as Snowy says!

Hello Don,

I believe that Snowy actually had to make a spreader and add a plate to her Whitfield's burn pots because the shells are smaller then the pellets and had a tendency to fall through. However I'm sure she will tell you all about it if you ask her.

As for the acorn flour recipes I think with the hundreds of thousands of old recipes I might have that ground well covered. Heck, I even managed to do pioneer pickles just from a list of ingredients on the inside of the back cover of my Grandmother's cook book. There was no information on the process at all. The interwebby and Google soon led to uncovering the process. I'll be doing some more of them provided I get plenty of cucumbers this year.

Delta-T,

Was the information at the acorn flour page about what you were thinking. It isn't exactly something that is quick, but then a lot of things aren't. I do a pickle that takes seven days from start to putting them in the jar. I've even been known to have two batches of them in the works at a time while making other things. Last year I even canned tomato sauce, normally I would freeze it, had too many ripe tomatoes so did 39 pints in jars. Wanted freezer space for other things.

 

[SmokeyTheBear]

Jeeze, for that money I'll start collecting acorns.

It's a lot of work.

 

[Fsappo]

Work? fuggetaboutit. I'm sure that if I was so inclined I could devise a way to suck up the acorns and process them.

 

[SmokeyTheBear]

Work? fuggetaboutit. I'm sure that if I was so inclined I could devise a way to suck up the acorns and process them.

I believe that when nuts are commercially harvested they actually shake the nuts out of the trees onto a tarp or some such cover placed around the trees. This makes the first step fairly fast. Then the nuts get the automated shelling and separation treatment. To do this by hand is quite slow, then you still have to process the nut meat to remove the tannin.

The really big problem with local acorns is that without proper attention to worm control you have to inspect the nuts before removing the meat to make into flour. This also leads back to my remark about pesticides residue and "bad stuff".

Like I said lots of work. Some of which must be done long before harvesting the acorns, easier to do the fuel part than the flour part.

 

[Delta-T]

SMokey- neat stuff about acorn flour. I had taken a class in "Colonial Living" where we learned about a lot of these things, but it has somehow escaped from my brain trap. I even heard of burying acorns to leech the toxins our. Leave it to those indigenous people to figure this stuff out...smarter than the average bear...no pun intended, just pure coincidence. I like things that take time..like Amish Friendship Bread, yeah, its a funky mass of fermented gooo, but it makes very tasty bread. Never made pickles....hmmm.

 

[harttj]

Hello

My neighbor gets tons of acorns every 2 years. I know if a whole acorn can contain moisture and if it was burned, then it would pop or explode. So if the acorns are crushed and dried, will they burn good? Would they still be too dirty?
If not, What is the best way to crush them and dry them?

I've burnt accorns. Several bushels this year. Augered fine, good heat. Worst part is gathering them.

Lay them out no more than 6 inches thick to dry or they started to mold.

Tim