Have you ever wondered how charcoal is made? Would like to make charcoal to maybe add an income stream to your homestead? Well, I have you covered! Aarron has figured out how to make it and I am going to pass on that information to you.

It all starts with wood. We go out and collect wood from the side of road and out in the desert. We do not cut trees down for this. We only collect what is already on the ground. This works better anyways, because the wood has to be dry before you can make it into charcoal. Wet wood will not work for this very well.

After you collect the wood, you have to burn it almost completely. The fire has to burn long enough and hot enough to start to burn the inside of the wood. Aarron cuts the wood down into smaller pieces so that it won’t take a very long time to burn. He will let it burn for around 20 minutes or so, depending on how much he has in there. The fire pit we use for this isn’t very big and doesn’t hold a whole lot but enough that at the end we have about 3 or 4 lbs of charcoal.

As the fire begins to burn down, cover it with sand. You have to make sure you cover it completely. You don’t want to see any fire or smoke coming out of the sand. Once it is completely covered it will continue to smolder under the sand for quite a while. Aarron leaves it covered for at least 12 hours. Once he uncovers  the wood, it is now charcoal. You will need to sift the smaller pieces out of the sand.

This is the charcoal after he has sifted it out of the sand. To light the charcoal, he just puts some paper or a small box under it in the grill and lights that. It will light the charcoal from there. This can be used to smoke meat as well as cook it.

Have a great day!

Renee