sez said:
Hi there, remember me? I know it's been ages since I've visited.
Anyway, to subject. Has anyone tried making charcoal the old fashioned way, with an earth covered mound. If so, how did it go?
Also, any idea of which woods are best?
Dear Sez.
I will try and make this a short reply................well there is always a first time for everything!
The humble burnt bit of wood what we call charcoal is strange stuff and we still haven’t fully understood it. It has the ability to change our genetic make up more than any other substance on the earth. Have a look at the evidence that will back up my argument.
Take one grown, responsible, articulate, mature male. Then add a pound of sausages some burgers, red sauce, onions and a bag of charcoal and what have you got within milliseconds of the aforementioned male coming into contact with the said bag of charcoal? Well, you are left with a mature man acting like a complete prat. He has gone through some form of genetic modification, he is now 10 years old, he starts to wear women’s clothes ( an apron), he gets drunk on half a pint of some old badgers bottom cider and even worse that all of that, he reckons that he Jamie bloody Oliver! I am sure you have seen this yourself!!.
On a serious note, charcoal has done more to alter the course of civilisation than anything else in the world. Fact, the Romans wouldn’t of beable to build their empire like they did, without the short sword and their body armour. The efficiency of the Roman soldier with the short sword was freighting, the Roman soldier was a highly disciplined fighting machine.
The only reason that they were able to manufacture the short sword was simply because they used charcoal to smelt the ore’s. No other fuel in those days was available to the metal workers and smiths that could reach such high temperatures, high enough to smelt the ore’s. In pre history, the Bronze and Iron age people used charcoal to smelt their weapons of war and of work. On a more peaceful note, they are, in my eyes, responsible for some of most striking jewellery that we have ever seen and put to shame the makers of fine art from modern times. This method of smelting was to last right up until the advent of the blast furnace which really come into its own at the beginning of seventeenth century when we they discovered that they could ‘ charcoal’ coal and be left with a product that is high in carbon and relatively cheap to produce compare to charcoal and the demand for charcoal was outstripping supply – the Industry Revolution was on its way.
The charcoal burners consumed astonishing amounts of wood. The average charcoal burner will require 6 tonnes of wood to produce 1 ton of charcoal a ratio of 6-1. A good charcoal burner’s ratio will be in the region of 5-1. A good friend of mine who goes by the name of Charcoal Jim, is one of the most efficient burners I know and produces about 40 ton of charcoal a year for the BBQ market. He is also one of the biggest burners around so he knows his stuff!
We owe a lot to our charcoal burners as through their trade an awful lot of our woodland were worked. The majority of their raw material came from our coppiced woodland and they really did manage vast acres of woodland for this purpose. It is said that in Sussex alone each forge( of which there were 140) consumed 5 tonnes of charcoal a week! So if I do the maths, that equates to a total of 700 tonnes a week and if you remember that I said that you will need 6 tonnes of wood to produce 1 ton of charcoal, so times 700 tonnes of charcoal by 6 you should then end up with the figure of 4,200. So, each week the woodsman and burners of Sussex needed to fell, convert and handle 4,200 tonnes of wood. This is an astonishing amount of wood.
How many people did that employ? How bloody hard did these people have to work? If you know anybody with the surname Coleman, ask them..........their ancestors used to be charcoal burners!
Charcoal burning is nearly as hard today. As with all woodland skills, nothing has change, because you can’t change anything. The only change that has been made is the method of production. Burners now use 4 foot tall, 8 foot wide metal rings with moveable chimneys and lids.
The most common method before the metal kilns was what called the earth kiln. The wood was graded into their right sizes and basically stack ed around a central flue in an ‘organised heap’. This makes it sound easy, well it called for a profound knowledge and understanding of your environment. You need to know soil type, expected wind temperature and moisture content of your wood and the list goes on.
Once the wood was stacked in accordance to it’s size and species the whole stack was covered in brash, straw, bracken or with anything else that was at hand. This was done to bind the soil together when you covered the kiln in it earth. Once this is done and everything was sealed ( to keep the air out) they wound tip hot embers down the flue, which will act like a chimney. The embers will set fire to the stack and was the stack is under way the chimney was sealed of using a turf. As the fire takes hold it will be drawn outwards and downwards by the small hole that you have left at the bottom of the heap. The charcoal burner can tell at any time the stage of the burn through the colour of the smoke ( we have all seen the colour of charcoal smoke on our BBQ’s- it has a slight blue haze) if the smoke is white than carbonisation is still under way and if it is blue, then it is burning charcoal, the product that you want!
A skilled burner, will tell what stage it is at by the smell of the smoke! The burners of old would build the huts out in the woodlands as they need to watched and attended 24 hours a day while they were burning, as any small hole that appears in the stack, would let enough air in to make the fire roar right through the stack and destroy all of your work and profit.
In 1282 in the forest of Dean their were over 900 hundred burners working and living in those woodlands.
There aren’t many woodlands about that haven’t seen, the worn, blacken face of, a charcoal burner.
The hardest working of all the woodsmen.
Jack.
