Friend of mine gave me this bag of lump charcoal. I've seen and used it before and know it burns faster. I have used embers of hardwood pulled from the firepit before in the grill with good results. Looked online on how to make it your self and it seems easy enough. May give it a try as I'm manning the firepit and smoker during an extended cook. Seems easy enough, just time consuming.
So what are the chances that I just watched this last night trying to learn myself something? I'm not looking to turn up a batch, just seems like something good to know.
I tried , either use coals from the firepit , wood................ or buy it. It was a pain in the a-- .
It seems that a lot of wood is consumed in the making of charcoal. Lump charcoal generally burns hotter than briquettes. I just buy briquettes by the bag. But, I don't have an offset smoker so I can't comment on how they behave. If I want to grill over coals, I'll split a few splits thinner and have a quick fire.
It IS a laborious process. A while back I got interested in making black powder, which sent me down the charcoal making rabbit hole. Back a couple generations ago (especially here in the northeast) they had huge brick kilns packed with dozens of cords of wood to do the job. Making it on a smaller scale doesn't seem too difficult if you've got all the time in the world and proper equipment though.
I watched a video and all the guy did was fill a galvanized steel five gallon pail with splits, cut a vent hole in the lid, and put it in a fire. Took several hours. I've got plenty of BL chunks here.
Bark, use as much bark as possible. The Kingsford plant has a mountain of bark that they feed into the plant. We goofed around a couple times and bark did much better but runs out fast than wood lump. Yea, what Buzz-saw said. It’s a dirty pain in the axe. Owl
Not sure I would use anything galvanized though. I don't like the thought of any heavy metals introduced into my food processing! Would be fine for charcoal for gunpowder though.
Having done a lot of welding/ cutting in the past and having had a mild case of galvanizing poison, I don't want to have anything to do with zinc and high heat. Maybe that is not a problem with this process or maybe the amount of oxide generated is not a problem if ingested instead of aspirated. BUT, I highly suspect that the inside of that can is covered with white zinc oxide and that the poster of the video, well meaning as he may be, has never had zinc poisoning. In any case, better safe than sorry for me! The process is very interesting and if I ever tried it for cooking charcoal I probably would use a 16 gallon mild steel barrel with the paint burned off and scrubbed and washed out.
I never knew about issues with zinc. Actually learned about potential problems fabricating it on here. Having used a lot of lead for chimney flashing and roofing I was very mind full to wear gloves when I worked with it. Ill have to check if Tractor supply or a similar store sells plains steel pails. Why take the chance with the galvanized. The galvanized pails I have are for charcoal briquettes and birdseed storage. I did post a question on that you tube video about using a galvanized can.
I thought about it but looked like more trouble than it was worth. The little I use to get the smoker going with a nice coal bed is done with a cheap $10 non lump bag.
This exactly , I use cheap briquets to get mine going also. Start them in a charcoal chimney , dump them in the firebox of the smoker then start slowly adding wood. I do this instead of starting a fire directly in the firebox to avoid the dirty smoke from startup Cheap , easy and works perfect.
I used to make a lot, but now that I have an OWB it is basically a charcoal factory. Get a 55 gal drum and a 25-30 gallon drum with a lid. Food safe, all that stuff. Cut the top and the bottom off the 55 and set it on 3 bricks (keep it off the ground for airflow). Fill the small drum with 3"-5" sticks of wood and put the lid on. Place the small drum inside the big drum. Fill the space between the drums with any kind of scrap wood, twigs, cardboard, whatever. Light the wood between the drums. Keep feeding it. When you get clear gas or the smoke coming out of the small drum it no longer flaring off (burning) it's done cooking. Stop feeding the fire and let everything sit untouched for 24 hours.
Yep, that zinc poisoning is nasty. I had it when I was young teen and dad was teaching me to weld. Built some side bodies for his truck out of galvanized pipe...took awhile to get over that
Take that one step further and do something with the wood gas coming out of the small barrel. My cousin has said there are guys on YouTube powering vehicles with it.
