The BBQ Charcoal Tutorial

[Niter]

THE BBQ CHARCOAL TUTORIAL

written by Niter

 

 

Overview

A simple tutorial on a humble subject: BBQ Charcoal. This tutorial will show you which brands to pick, which individual pieces to use, how to process them to usable forms and how to clean up after.

 

 

Brand selection

When looking for BBQ Charcoal, you are specifically looking for chunks of carbonized wood, and not briquettes. Briquettes sometimes have clay or another binder added to help consolidate them, which you don't want. What you also don't want is Coal. Coal and Charcoal are two very different things. You specifically want wood charcoal chunks, as used for the barbecue.

 

When buying, go to a big place that will present you several brands, or a shopping mall where several brands are present.

 

We all know we want stuff like Willow, Alder or Paulownia charcoal, but usually when you buy the bags it doesn't specify what wood has been used to make that particular brand, and often it is wood from all sorts of trees. In my experience it is often the cheaper brands that are better.

 

There is a trick however! First off, you want the brand with the lightest charcoal. If it is sold by weight, you want the biggest bag for the same weight, if it is sold by volume you want the brand with the lightest bags, and the lightest bag of the brand is what you are after.

 

You know when BBQ-ing there is the quality charcoal that has a good weight to it, is less messy and one load will fuel the whole family event. Then there is rubbish charcoal that weighs next to nothing, is messier, lights easier but you have to keep topping up the BBQ all the time with fresh loads? It is precisely this light "crapcoal" you are after! What is bad for the barbecue (low density, relatively fast burning time) is precisely what you want for pyro applications, because this fluffiness and rapid burning will only be enhanced once you crush it up.

 

Brands that come in gunnybags or other bags with holes in them usually can be dismissed right off the bat. You want the kinds in paper or plastic bags, which generally are softer, crumble easier, and therefore are put in bags that don't make a mess, as opposed to very hard charcoals, which are less useful to us.

 

This is the charcoal that is generally cooked best, and also the charcoal of soft Hardwoods or Softwoods, which is what you're looking for generally.

 

Now there is the second trick you can do in the shop: Through the surface of the bag grab hold of pieces of charcoal, and see if you can crush them by hand. If you exert considerable force to a soapbar-sized piece and it doesn't crumble, you've got the wrong bag.

 

Once you got the right bag from the right brand, take it home with you.

 

 

Pre-processing Part 1 - Hand crushing & selection

Once in your designated workspace, lay out a large metal tray or similar hard wide container, a bin and a wooden dowel or large pestle. Also have a moist cleanup cloth nearby and a towel. Wear work clothes and a dust mask.

 

Open the bag, and take out pieces one by one. If they are soap bar sized, you should be able to crush them with your hand, to a mixture of powders and pieces no more than an inch across. If the pieces are too big for that, break them up by hand or crush (not hammer) them with the dowel or pestle, rubbing hard in all sorts of directions.

 

When crushing by hand, good charcoal crushes like a handful of very hard biscuits. Bad charcoal is hard as a rock. If you are reasonably strong like me, the charcoal should come apart well before squeezing it *really* hard.

 

The pieces that are too hard for this manual treatment should be discarded in the bin for uses such as BBQ-ing.

 

Proceed to do as much charcoal as you will need in one go, as now your hands are covered in jet black shiny granules, so you might as well do all of this step in one go.

 

It is important to select this type of charcoal, not as much for its ease of processing (which is a great plus though) but because of its physical characteristics. Light charcoal that crushes easy is a relatively spongy, brittle charcoal - with a relatively high microscopic surface area. This kind of charcoal most easily comes apart in coarse-surface microgranules when milled with a higher surface area. It tends to give you the fluffiest powders as well, lowering unpressed composition density. Compare this to the difference between spherical and flake aluminium in the usefulness for pyrotechnic applications. And yes, the ease of processing makes it the nicest charcoal to work with.

 

If you need to clean your hands, wash them well under the tap or clean them with the moist cloth. Charcoal is incredibly dirty, but it is honest dirt that is easy to clean off smooth surfaces in this degree of fineness.

 

 

Pre-processing Part 2 - Making Mill Feed

After the hand crushing is over, proceed to making mill feed. Mill feed is a mildly granulated charcoal which is suitable for your mill. If you use mortar and pestle, a coffee grinder or ball mill you want the largest chunks of charcoal to be approximately 1/3 of an inch (8mm) at most as larger pieces are awkward in the mortar, jam the coffee grinder and need substantially longer ballmilling to get them fine.

 

This pre-treatment is rather easy: you take the dowel or pestle you used before, and pulverize your hand-crushed charcoal to a finer consistency. As you hand-selected your charcoal for softness, this takes little effort. Because rubbing and no banging is involved in this pretreatment, dust formation is minimal..

 

Once you have all of it done, you have mill feed. The charcoal is now ready for mortar & pestle, coffee grinder or ball mill.

 

 

If you want very coarse charcoal for effects, you can run some of the mill feed through a bigger screen and a smaller screen to get the degree of coarseness you want.

 

If you made more mil feed than can be used the first time out, put it in a bag awaiting processing. If you worked well ahead, big plastic milk jugs are an excellent storage medium.

 

 

In the mortar and ball mill, the amount of charcoal is brought to fineness in one go.

 

When using a coffee grinder you can add a third step to the pre-processing, and that is to give full coffee grinder loads of mill feed 20 + 10 seconds of grinding each to produce a further processed relatively coarse powder that should pass through a kitchen strainer with ease. This is what I do, I store it like this, and when I want a meshed or finder grade I go from there.

 

 

Cleanup

Oh, the humanity! When working with charcoal your workplace tends to get dirty to an epic degree. The above method is one of the least messy ones, but still there will be soot-black surfaces to clean. This is best done with slightly moist paper towels, to pick up the dust, then throw away. Hands are best washed under the tap, or at least wiped somewhat clean. Do not use soaking wet towels, hot water or detergent, these work with you with stains but against you with insoluble pigment powders like charcoal.

 

Pay specific attention to the bottom of your shoes so you don't spread dirt on carpeted floors. Sanitary surfaces like stone, linoleum and smooth wood are relatively easy to clean, but carpets etc can be very badly stained, stains which are very tenacious.

 

For this reason, wash your work clothes *separately* from other textiles and if they are really dirty, don't burden your washing machine with that kind of dirt.

 

 

 

This concludes the BBQ Charcoal Tutorial, thanks for reading!

[Swede]

Niter, thank you for this, it is an excellent writeup! I never thought to shop for, or hand sort, the BBQ charcoal by weight. I've always just bought the cowboy charcoal and used everything that comes out. It makes sense to take the larger lumps and do a quick density assessment by hand.

 

Great job!

[Richtee]

Now...with all the stuff you DON'T want... can you or shall I do a short discourse on how to MAKE more charcoal with it? I assume to most here that would be trivial, but ya never know.

 

Or, like me, if ya just use the good <bad> stuff for ribs, that's cool too ;{)

[Niter]

shall I do a short discourse on how to MAKE more charcoal with it? I assume to most here that would be trivial, but ya never know.

 

 

By all means do so Richtee!

 

People often don't spend much thought on the "basic" stuff because it seems so elementary, but it is precisely these details (like good/bad charcoal) that make a great difference in the results you get.

 

If you have sound practical experience, please make a Charcoal Cooking tutorial - there isn't one in the tutorials section to date and cooking charcoal definitely deserves a good tutorial and resulting quality discussion.

[Richtee]

OK well, it may not be as elegant as the preceding presentation...but here goes.

 

Procure yerself a coffee can. Drink coffee first. Then a tripled-over length of heavy duty Al that will cover the opening of said can by at least an inch. Add desired wood in small split pieces to pack the can as fully capable, below the rim of course. Cover can with foil, "creasing" the foil around the lip of said can with wood included.

 

Start a fire with all that "bad" charcoal. What you want to do is "bury" the can about half way in the charcoal...so get a vessel that will hold a layer of charcoal around the can. A larger by a couple inchs can would work, assuming you punch it full of air holes. Or just a big pile in yer BBQ, and heap the charcoal around the can.

 

Fire it up, and wait. When you do not see flames/gasses issuing from the can, remove it gently...carefully with tongs. DO NOT remove foil seal.

 

As soon as the can is cool to the touch...MIGHT be an hour... remove your newly made charcoal and process as Niter has outlined.

 

PS I use packed newsprint..actually "packing paper" which may be better...just stuff a bunch in and the process is the same...EXCEPT..no grinding. See the BP thread for a vid of it's quality.

[Niter]

How long does this approximately take with newspaper? I've read about it being a fast charcoal. How large is the coffee can (a pound of coffee is about a quart) and approximately what weight of newspaper do you put in? Does it stink much?

 

I myself was thinking of a foodcan with multiple tinfoil cover, with a toilet roll stuffed into it (the paper, not the cardboard roll) with an alcohol burner underneath as the heat source. Direct flame from an alcohol burner or camping stove seems more efficient to me than burning charcoal, getting the job done faster.

 

Do you know anything about toilet paper charcoal? I'm sure someone has done this already. Processing toilet paper one roll at a time has a simplicity that appeals to me. It has a very fluffy structure as a paper already, with all the moisture out and the hydroxyls knocked off the stuff must get airfloat by just shaking it in a jar!

 

I might have to buy the paper that more resembles newspaper though

[oskarchem]

No blazing charcoal wil be much hotter than a camping stove or a alcochol burner.

[TheSidewinder]

Though it's larger-scale than that being talked about, here is a tutorial at the WPAG site that covers charcoal production nicely, I think:

 

http://www.wpag.us/charcoal.htm

[gods knight]

very good tutorial . I havent really thought about bbq charcoal that way, can i get the name of the brand you buy?

[Gunzway]

Great tutorial there!

I am glad there's some sort of tutorial for this as I was running out of charcoal and was deciding on buying some. This will really help me when choosing/buying my bag of charcoal.

Well Done!

[Richtee]

How long does this approximately take with newspaper? I've read about it being a fast charcoal. How large is the coffee can (a pound of coffee is about a quart) and approximately what weight of newspaper do you put in? Does it stink much?

 

I myself was thinking of a foodcan with multiple tinfoil cover, with a toilet roll stuffed into it (the paper, not the cardboard roll) with an alcohol burner underneath as the heat source. Direct flame from an alcohol burner or camping stove seems more efficient to me than burning charcoal, getting the job done faster.

 

Do you know anything about toilet paper charcoal? I'm sure someone has done this already. Processing toilet paper one roll at a time has a simplicity that appeals to me. It has a very fluffy structure as a paper already, with all the moisture out and the hydroxyls knocked off the stuff must get airfloat by just shaking it in a jar!

 

I might have to buy the paper that more resembles newspaper though 

Actually, I use a turkey fryer for a heat source, and a "big" coffee can. I can pack probably 8-10 wadded up sheets in it. Never weighed it out tho. I'd estimate I get about 100 grams or so. And yeah, stinks pretty good heh.

 

Since I'm a smoked meat devotee, I use my bagged lump to run my smoker, not to cook charcoal...but a lump charcoal fire is HOT! I don't think you'd get anywhere near the temps with a alcohol burner... but the turkey fryer will do the job on the coffee can full in about half an hour. You should rotate the can if ya use the fryer..lay it on it's side and spin it 90° once every few min, then back on it's steel end. This will speed up the cooking process.

 

When it's done, I bust it up with a stick inside the can..this WILL produce a bit of airfloat...and dump into my ball mill for an hour or so..then it's ALL airfloat.

 

Hmmm never tried the TP thing. Some TP is treated with lotions, etc, and some I think has cloth fibers in it. Prolly the cheapo stuff would be best?

[Swede]

Interesting thought on the TP. Yes, I'd go for basic, generic TP and avoid the perfumes and such, although honestly all that crap would likely be burnt off. I also think I'd figure out a way to core it, and remove the cardboard tube, to ensure 100% consistency.

 

Along those lines, there are institutional paper towel rolls called "center pull towels." You see them in airport washrooms and such. The cardboard center is designed to be removed, and all that's left is a 1 foot diameter roll of fluffy cellulose goodness.

 

I'd love to hear about TP BP, whether it's fast or not. maybe it's time to fire up the grill once more.

[TheSidewinder]

For those of us in the USA, keep in mind that crap brands of BBQ charcoal like Kingsford, which contains dirt, bear turds, and other assorted garbage, is just that: garbage. Careful selection of your BBQ charcoal is a must. From what I understand, BBQ charcoal in Europe is generally MUCH better to start with, and isn't all made from hardwoods?

 

Someone mentioned Olive wood charcoal being commonly available in their country, but I don't remember reading about any tests they did with it.

 

If it's available to you, Cowboy Brand Lump Charcoal is a very good one to start with. I have a bag of an equivalent brand (can't remember the name offhand) that is excellent "as-is", given that it's a hardwood charcoal. Softwood charcoals are harder to find, I think.

 

Getting charcoal that's made from whole wood pieces, rather than sawdust, bear turds and chicken lips, is a must, as Niter pointed out.

 

Has anyone tried a good whole-wood Mesquite charcoal?

[Niter]

crap brands of BBQ charcoal like Kingsford, which contains dirt, bear turds, and other assorted garbage

 

 

Whoa, I read "bear turds" before and I assumed it was a joke. Indeed, I live in Europe and I've never seen charcoal like that sold for BBQ-ing. Not even sawed wood either.

 

Here in Holland our woods and parks are tended to as if they were gardens. Its usually wood removed from them that gets made into charcoal.

 

Every bag I've opened here had clearly identifiable branches and broken up logs as the wood source.

 

 

Another interesting charcoal idea I had would be charcoal made from Corn Starch (Maizena).

 

Corn starch is a cheap supermarket product of constant quality. The typical size of corn starch granules is spherical, in the 5-20 micrometer range. Cornstarch as is passes entirely through a 400 mesh screen, and most of it passes 600 mesh.

 

If you cook it, the spheres give up their 15-30% water weight and then dehydrate to yield charcoal. This gives you, without ball milling, a constant quality spongy charcoal of 600 mesh!

 

The only thing I can see going wrong with this is that too rapid gas flow might pick up particles.

 

 

If corn starch can easily be cooked and yields a fast charcoal, it would probably be one of the very best, as the corn starch you buy in any supermarket worldwide is basically the same product, making whatever quality its charcoal has, reliable.

[pyrogeorge]

TheSidewinder, i am who wrote about olive wood charcoal but i didn't test it because as i read and someone else advise to use grapevine charcoal for fast BP and i have plenty of grapevine woods and olive woods too but i didn't test it so far.

Also i think that olive wood is hardwood

[TheSidewinder]

Ah, ok, thanks for checking in, pipipi. So you never tried Olve wood, eh? I'm still curious about it. If it's a hardwood, it should make very good BP for stars and streamers then. Not sure how good it would be for lift.

 

 

And Niter, most of our BBQ charcoal that ISN'T whole-wood charcoal is just plain crap. It's made from sawdust, mill shavings, and whatever else can be had very cheaply. Bear turds, dirt, and whatever else the wood had spilled on it while it sat waiting for disposal, is inevitable. AND undesirable.

 

The so-called "gourmet" charcoals for grilling, such as Cowboy Brand etc, are made from whole pieces of wood but they usually cost a fair bit more money.

 

I'm certain your tutorial would apply very well to those brands which use whole woods, but for the ordinary "briquettes" like Kingsford I don't think it would help much.

[Richtee]

If it's available to you, Cowboy Brand Lump Charcoal is a very good one to start with.

 

 

Has anyone tried a good whole-wood Mesquite charcoal?

I'd have to go with Cowboy as a good start as it's CRAP to smoke/BBQ with. Burns way fast and has alot of "bear crap and chicken lips" too tho. I have found like 2 lbs of ROCK in a bag on that sheeet.

 

Mesquite would intutively to me be no good. It burns hot as hell, but it's slow...and VERY strong...EG: not a "light" charcoal. But I speak from culinary experience here.

[TheSidewinder]

You found ROCKS in your bag of Cowboy Charcoal?!?!

 

I'd call the company and bitch at them.

 

My equivalent brand was all fairly large-diameter wood (2-4"), all shiny-black through and through, and made some very nice BP.

 

I got it for a song, too. They discontinued it for some reason. May have been TOO good and they lost all their investment money, lol.

[Richtee]

You found ROCKS in your bag of Cowboy Charcoal?!?!

 

I'd call the company and bitch at them.

I did... they say due to the loading process... front end loaders I'm sure... that it happens. Sent me a coupon for a free bag... only had 1 rock in it. Oh Joy. Still ain't good for the BBQ end of charcoal. I mean it works... but the best...and perhaps should be shied away from for pyro...is Royal Oak lump.

[TheSidewinder]

Hmm... if it's the one I'm thinging of, I've heard Royal Oak Lump is a good hardwood charcoal, nearly as good as Cowboy (though I haven't verified it).

 

If it is, it should make good BP for streamers and stars.

[oskarchem]

I have to go to the supermarket to have a look at some new charcoal. I have a lot of bags at my house, if I remember well, the bags I have contain Oak charcoal...Dunno if this will be any good, but since I live in a very wine productive part of France, I guess I can get ahold of some vine sticks to make charcoal...

 

Thanks fot this tutorial Nitler

[TheSidewinder]

I should note that "Royal Oak" isn't actually made out of Oak. Not sure what it is, but it's a hardwood of some type.

 

Oak itself should make a good hardwood charcoal, again for streamers and stars.

 

Hmm... does ANYONE know of a good source of lump softwood charcoal?

[Richtee]

Hmm... does ANYONE know of a good source of lump softwood charcoal?

Doubt it Side... as it's produced for BBQ/smoking, it would NOT be desirable. Ever had pine smoked ribs? Me either LOL!

[pyrogeorge]

TheSidewinder i will make olive charcoal in future to test it.

[Niter]

Thanks fot this tutorial Nitler

 

 

 

Its Niter, as in the old name for KNO3 and NaNO3.

 

Pronounced like Nite-er, not like Hitler.