FYI - Charcoal

[Rocky_Creek]

Traditionally, charcoal was made by slow, controlled smoldering fires in an earth kiln. Tennessee distillers burn in the open to get impurities out of the wood that would remain in kilned charcoal. What kind of impurities? According to Dr. Peter J. F. Harris, of the Department of Chemistry at the University of Reading in the UK and an expert on the structure of charcoal, “many volatile compounds will be released when wood is heated to high temperatures, some of them harmful, notably methanol.”