Charcoal Home

5 easy steps to making charcoal in a kiln.

Why choose locally produced charcoal?

How is charcoal made?

Charcoal is made when wood is heated in the absence of air. Although charcoal can be made using an external heat source to carbonise an airtight container of wood (using a retort kiln), the most common way is to burn part of the wood to generate the heat required, before restricting the airflow. Traditionally this was achieved by adding a burning “charge” (wood/charcoal) to the “clamp” (piled up wood) and covering with turf to restrict the air. Since the 1920’s this process has been modernised to employ portable metal kilns tocontain the wood in an air-controlled environment during the carbonisation into charcoal. This process takes many hours to burn off water moisture and other chemical elements. Combustion is then arrested by shutting out all the air to leave a solid black residue to cool which we know as charcoal.

Generally speaking, the denser the timber, the better quality of the charcoal produced. All UK charcoal burners use hardwood - not resinous soft woods. Therefore the most commonly used woods for this purpose are ash, beech, oak, chestnut and hazel.