Charcoal, burned in the wood

Burned in the wood.

Lumpwood charcoal from coppiced hardwood, made in the same wood it is cut from.

It is cooked, not burned.

The wood is sealed in a kiln with almost no air and heated until everything that is not carbon has left it as smoke. If it catches properly it is ash, and a whole burn is lost.

Sealed, then lit from the top
Air shut down within the hour
Two days to cool before opening

The smoke is the point.

Everything coming off the kiln is water, tar and acid leaving the wood. When the smoke turns from white to thin and blue it is done, and that is the only instrument anybody uses.

5 to 1tonnes of green timber to a tonne of charcoal

The wood is better for it.

Coppicing on a rotation puts light on the floor and the stools come back thicker every cycle. The charcoal is what pays for the woodland management rather than the other way round.

Order a load

One burn

Four days, and two of them are waiting.

A ring kiln takes about three cubic metres of cut cordwood and gives back roughly six hundred kilos of charcoal. This is what happens between the two.

01The cutHornbeam and ash taken on a fifteen year rotation, in winter, when there is nothing nesting and the sap is down.

02FillingCordwood cut to length and packed upright, tight, with the thin stuff down the middle where it will char first.

03LightingLit from the top so the burn works downward. Lighting the bottom is how you turn three tonnes of timber into ash.

04GradingTipped, sorted by hand and the fines kept back for the barbecue trade. Nothing is bagged until it is cold.

Specification

What is in a sack.

SpeciesHornbeam, ash and oak, whatever the cut gives

Sack weight8 kg, which is about 40 litres

MoistureUnder 5 per cent, tested on the day

Time to cooking heat12 to 15 minutes from lighting

Burn timeAbout 90 minutes at grilling heat

Ash leftRoughly 3 per cent by weight

AdditivesNone, and none is possible

Where it comes fromOne wood, and we will tell you which

£14 a sack

Briquettes are cheaper. They are also sawdust, starch and a coal binder.

It says so on the bag, if you look. This is one species mix from one wood, with no binder and nothing sprayed on it, and it burns hotter for longer.

Enquire

Order a load.

Tell us how many sacks and roughly where you are. Restaurants we deliver to weekly, everybody else we deliver to when we are passing, which is usually within the fortnight.