Charcoal

[osagebow]

Just skimming through some videos and how to's there's a lot of different ways to make charcoal. Everything from digging a hole in the ground, to using 55 gallon drums, to using 55 gal drums with a smaller drum inside. I'm going to try my hand at it this coming spring, I think it'll be fun, maybe get a couple neighbors involved.

This reminds me, we were at Death Valley National Park in 2015, and ran across what used to be a large charcoal making operation. It was built in 1879 and only in operation for 3 years. The kilns are 25 feet high.... zoom in on the picture of the plaque and read about it. It's interesting. Death Valley is a fascinating place.

That is pretty neat. I drove through Death Valley once. It was the lowest point in my life We have a lot iot of "coaling roads" cut across the mountains for the iron furnaces that were here in the Shenandoah Valley up into the 1880's or so. The Union overlooked them at first but hammered them once they got wise. One section of road (a rock lined cart path) cut through my creek bottom is actually where i've cut most of my last 2-3 years of stuff

I looked into making charcoal a few years back but instead just do "coals to order" in a separate old grill as I need them

 

[Woody5506]

Charcoal is made by heating wood in the absence of oxygen until only pure carbon remains. Not the same conditons in a wood stove.

Right, but say you load up for an overnight burn, come down in the morning to a pile of coals and scooped them out into a sealed metal container. Once cooled, don't you technically have charcoal? Or would it not re-light and work the same as charcoal "as we know it"?

I'm mostly asking because more and more I'm getting sick of buying bags of the stuff when I know it would be easy to make a ton of it in a drum.

 

[osagebow]

This guy makes it in a small woodstove with a hotel pan. think I'm gonna try this

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[SpaceBus]

I was thinking about making a retort that sits over one of my solo stove firepits. Some kind of vessel with a lid and a small hole in the bottom that can be suspended over the fire. The firepit is mostly smokeless and would be able to heat the retort to the point of pyrolyzing the biomass inside. The hole in the bottom would allow the volatiles to condense and drip down the bottom into the fire to be burned to keep the process going.

 

[Seasoned Oak]

Right, but say you load up for an overnight burn, come down in the morning to a pile of coals and scooped them out into a sealed metal container. Once cooled, don't you technically have charcoal?

See post #28

 

[MoDoug]

This guy makes it in a small woodstove with a hotel pan. think I'm gonna try this

This is interesting. I like how it gases off and makes use of the heat, like secondary burn tubes, and you're making charcoal. I wonder if you could use the cheap aluminum baking pans with lids to do it as well. Aluminum melting point is 1220 degrees, the fire wouldn't get anywhere near that. The aluminum pans are not nearly as durable, but you can buy 10 times more of them at half the price.

 

[SpaceBus]

This is interesting. I like how it gases off and makes use of the heat, like secondary burn tubes, and you're making charcoal. I wonder if you could use the cheap aluminum baking pans with lids to do it as well. Aluminum melting point is 1220 degrees, the fire wouldn't get anywhere near that. The aluminum pans are not nearly as durable, but you can buy 10 times more of them at half the price.

I don't think one of those would survive. The fire gets every bit that hot in the firebox.

 

[MoDoug]

I don't think one of those would survive. The fire gets every bit that hot in the firebox.

I guess I'm underestimating what the temps get up to in the belly of the beast.. but the concept is interesting with the hotel pans. I hate to put out money, to later find out it's a novelty approach. I need to think about what I have on hand for a couple trial runs.

 

[Poindexter]

I have made some charcoal. It is a time consuming pain in the neck. Were I to continue I would put a 35 (27?) gallon drum inside a 55 gallon drum with some pipework to be a retort. And the drums wouldn't last very long.

One thing I would do with those wood chunks is break them up to something like golf ball to baseball size and put them in a charcoal chimney. I have been grilling on glowing hardwood coals with charcoal lately, instead of smoldering hardwood chunks with charcoal. The flavors of the various woods are still similar, but the smoke flavor is more delicate. Think of the difference between mittens and gloves.

White Oak takes a good 20-40 minutes to burn down to glowing in a charcoal chimney, then fill the chimney up with lump and let the WO coals light the charcoal. The flavor of beef grilled on glowing white oak is a new personal favorite.

If you must try it, start with a quart sized paint can, punch a few holes in the lid, fill it with pencil to pen blank sized splits and go play at your outdoor firepit for a heat source.

 

[MoDoug]

White Oak takes a good 20-40 minutes to burn down to glowing in a charcoal chimney, then fill the chimney up with lump and let the WO coals light the charcoal. The flavor of beef grilled on glowing white oak is a new personal favorite.

If you must try it, start with a quart sized paint can, punch a few holes in the lid, fill it with pencil to pen blank sized splits and go play at your outdoor firepit for a heat source.

This is interesting, I enjoy hearing about different approaches to grilling. I have a charcoal chimney, and use it quite a bit, a simple but great invention. Curious though, what is the purpose of the lump, wouldn't the glowing WO be enough to grill the meat?

And I like the idea of using a paint can.

 

[Poindexter]

You may certainly grill or smoke on all hardwood coals. It is a dollar thing for me. @MoDoug

I have an offset smoker for wild caught salmon, and I just burn alder in it. When I need alder I call my friend at DOT to ask what intersections they have complaints on that are low on the list. He says "go to the corner of blah and blah". I fill my truck with alder, clear the sightlines of the intersection back to DOT regs and he sends a chipper truck a few days later for what I leave behind. Alder is literally a weed up here, but salmon smoked on alder, like beer, is proof God loves us and wants us to be happy.

When I am near Austin, TX they burn all oak in their offset smokers for beef, but they would have to pay for alder what I have to pay for white oak. Flat sawn white oak is $10 per board foot up here, wider than 8", figured, or quartersawn starts at 11.50/bf and goes up quickly. Texas beef smoked on Texas oak, more proof of God's love.

When I am doing beef on white oak I put paper in the bottom of the chimney, then a couple or three inches of charcoal, and then 4 or 5 fist sized chunks of white oak. Light that off, let the white oak burn down to coals(20-40 minutes, yelow flames OK, you want the blue flames burnt out), fill the chimney with more charcoal, let that get going pretty OK, and then pile all that mess on one side of the grate to get your reverse sear going. Once your steaks are up around 110-115 dF IT on the indirect side bring them over to the hot side, directly over the coals, to get a nice crust on them, stick them in the cambro ardound 125-127dF IT and put on some clean underwear so your wife doesn't get distracted after dinner.

If you got white oak coming out your ears, just use that and don't stretch it with charcoal. If you are using 1/3 glowing alder coals and 2/3 charcoal your salmon will be within a couple whiskers of mine. Smoldering hardwood chunks is a gateway drug to real (red hot glowing coals) BBQ I think.

 

[MoDoug]

@Poindexter I understand the dollar thing. When I read your post on this, I searched the internet for white oak in Alaska. Needless to say I didn't find much, It makes sense to stretch it out with charcoal at those rates.

“wild salmon smoked on alder, like beer, is proof God loves us and wants us to be happy” That's quotable, and God does love us! We have alder in Missouri, but its range is in the southern part of the state. Interestingly the MO Department of Conservation shows it's range following the Missouri River, I guess it can't make it north of it. I'll have to settle for store bought wild salmon, but now I'm craving it!

Not too long after the quarantine started last year and the run on the stores ran the shelves empty, we ordered a side of beef and a whole hog to make sure we had a good supply of meat. The wait list was 3 months, and while it isn't Texas beef, it's still a lot better than store bought. I'm going to have to try your method of grilling with white oak. I've been very lucky this season on firewood, and most of it is white oak and hickory, it's coming out my ears. That's actually what started this post, wondering what to do with odd size pieces.

 

[GreenMountainBoy]

I have two observations. One, put the effort into learning to grill-smoke-BBQ over a live fire. I won't kid you, it took me 15-20 years to master it, but it's absolutely a skill worth learning. Whatever you think of Steve Raichlin, he's absolutely right - you cook over a live wood fire with your nose and ears as much as with your eyes. Yeah, you'll still make mistakes, but even those are enjoyably edible. Second, I'm also intrigued by home-made charcoal. I seem to always have a decent amount of it when I clean out my woodstove, especially after burning hickory. I'd like to figure out a way to screen the ashes so that only the reasonably-sized charcoal pieces don't go through the screen and are left behind, then experimenting using those as part of the live wood fire setup. If anyone has successful experiences in this area, please let me know the details.

 

[MoDoug]

My outdoor fire pit has been building up with log splitting waste to the point I needed to burn it. Then an idea hit me, I need to burn a pile of wood waste, and I have chunks of oak all over the place. All I needed was a metal container to put some oak into and bury it in the middle of the wood pile. I stumbled across some 16 oz. food cans, with the tops cut off in the cans. I crammed some oak chunks into it and put the cut off top onto the top of the oak, then I placed another piece of metal on top of that. I buried it and let it burn, this morning and I have mostly charcoal. Some of the bigger pieces in the bottom were blackened but not really charcoal.

For a quick throw it together at the last moment attempt, it went well. Next time, I will get more fire under the can.

 

[WoodScrounger]

My brother-in-law used to make charcoal in South America. They built clay or mud furnaces stuffed and them with wood and lit it. Once a nice hot fire was going they would seal up the openings and leave it alone for a few days. The idea is to not open it until it is cold. Otherwise you could have an explosion when you open it to oxygen. Have fun!

 

[peakbagger]

When we used to have bonfires we would hose down the bed at the end of the night. There is plenty of residual heat at the end of the night to dry out the water vapor.

Years ago when I went to the National Boy Scout jamboree we had to cook with charcoal briquettes. They expected that after we were done cooking each meal that we would take the unburnt briquettes out of the pan and dip them in water. That would put the briquette out but they were still hot enough that they dried out before the next meal. we also set them in the sun and used them for the next meal. We only got so many briquettes for each meal so if we used too many we got to eat a cold meal. We figured it out pretty quick and maintained a small cache of fresh briquettes for the duration of the event.

 

[MoDoug]

I cooked some burgers over the lump charcoal I made a few days ago. It was a learning experience, I think that was my first time cooking with lump. It worked really well, it cooked hot and fast, you have to keep an eye on it. The burgers had a smoked oak flavor. The successful first trial has received approval for another round of grilling.

 

[MoDoug]

When we used to have bonfires we would hose down the bed at the end of the night. There is plenty of residual heat at the end of the night to dry out the water vapor.

I've doused many late night bonfires over the years, and watched the cloud of steam as it rose.