Two fuels,
two jobs
Most supermarket charcoal is small, damp, dusty and half softwood. It sparks, it burns out in forty minutes, and it makes a £3,000 oven cook like a £30 barbecue. We sell two things instead, because no single fuel is right for both an open parrilla and a sealed oven on a twelve-hour brisket — and both of ours come from Indonesia, for a reason we explain further down.
The everyday one
Bamboo lump
Moso bamboo, carbonised and graded. It lights in about fifteen minutes, runs hot and clean, and it is what you want under a parrilla where you are burning through fuel and want the fire responsive.
It is also the most defensible fuel we could have chosen. Bamboo is a grass, not a tree — it reaches harvest in three to five years against twenty to forty for hardwood, and it regrows from the same root stock without replanting. If you have ever felt uneasy about burning tropical hardwood on a Sunday, this is the answer to that.
78–82% fixed carbon · 3–4 hours in a sealed oven · £1.60/kg
The serious one
Indonesian Halaban
Hardwood Charcoal
Halaban — Vitex pubescens — is a dense Indonesian hardwood, and charcoal made from it is among the best grilling fuel in the world. 85–90% fixed carbon. It burns four to six hours in a sealed chamber, throws very little smoke and no spark at all, and holds a temperature steadily enough that it is what a lot of serious kitchens quietly run on.
It is also the only charcoal we could find with a clean legal answer. Indonesia is the only country on earth issuing FLEGT licences, so every sack is verified legal at origin rather than argued about afterwards. More on that below, because it matters more than it sounds.
85–90% fixed carbon · 4–6 hours · FLEGT licensed · £2.20/kg
Read this before you order
Dense charcoal needs
a chimney starter
Not a fault, and not difficult — but nobody tells you, so people get caught out on the first cook.
Halaban is much denser than the charcoal most people have used. A firelighter shoved underneath it will struggle and may go out. It wants a chimney starter and twenty to twenty-five minutes, or a bed of bamboo lit first with the halaban added on top.
Get that wrong and the reasonable conclusion is that the charcoal is bad, or worse, that your new oven doesn't work. So every oven and every parrilla ships with a chimney starter and 10kg of bamboo lump — not halaban. Learn the unit on the easy fuel, then move up once you know how it breathes.
If you order halaban and don't own a chimney starter, ring us and we'll put one in the box at cost. It is a £42 tool that makes a £66 sack of charcoal behave.
| Bamboo | Halaban | |
|---|---|---|
| Fixed carbon | 78–82% | 85–90% |
| Lights in | 12–15 min | 20–25 min, chimney recommended |
| Burn time, sealed oven | 3–4 hours | 4–6 hours |
| Smoke | Low | Very low |
| Heat | Hot, quick to respond | Very hot, very steady |
| Ash | Under 3% | Under 2% |
| Spark | Minimal | None |
| Best for | Parrilla, everyday oven use | Long roasts, low-smoke grilling |
| Legality | Supplier audited | FLEGT licensed at origin |
| Price | £1.60/kg | £2.20/kg |
What good charcoal is
Four things
that matter
- High fixed carbon. Everything else follows from this. It is the proportion of the lump that is actually fuel rather than ash, water and volatiles.
- Big pieces. 30–90mm. Small charcoal packs tight, chokes its own airflow and burns out. You cannot fix that with more vent.
- Dry. Under 8% moisture. Damp charcoal is why people think their oven is slow to light; you are boiling water before you get any heat.
- Screened. Dust is the enemy. Every bag we sell is graded and de-dusted before bagging, which is most of why it lights predictably.
Specification
The numbers
- Halaban species
- Vitex pubescens, Kalimantan, Indonesia
- Halaban fixed carbon
- 85–90%
- Bamboo species
- Moso bamboo, 3–5 year maturity
- Bamboo fixed carbon
- 78–82%
- Moisture
- Under 8%, both
- Ash content
- Under 2% halaban, under 3% bamboo
- Piece size
- 30–90mm, graded and de-dusted
- Bag
- 10kg, weatherproof, resealable
- Origin
- Indonesia
- Legality
- FLEGT licensed under the UK–Indonesia VPA
Buying it
Two ways, and
one warning
Charcoal is heavy and bulky, and carriage on a single bag costs almost as much as the bag. Rather than hide that in an inflated price, we sell it the two ways that actually make sense.
The sensible option
Charcoal subscription
Three bags on your doorstep four times a year, £6 under the one-off price, carriage included. Pick bamboo, halaban or the split box, change it whenever you like, skip a drop, or cancel — there is no minimum term and we will not make you ring anyone to stop it.
Or buy it outright
Bamboo lump — 30kg
Our minimum standalone order and the everyday fuel. Lights in fifteen minutes, burns clean and hot, suits the parrilla and the ovens equally.
Split box — 30kg
20kg bamboo to get going and cook on, 10kg halaban for the long ones. If you don't know which you want, order this.
Halaban hardwood — 30kg
Indonesian halaban, FLEGT licensed. Dense, four to six hours, very little smoke. The one for long roasts and low-smoke grilling.
Bamboo lump — 90kg
Quarter-pallet rate. For the 80 Cabinet, trade customers, or anyone who cooks properly.
Oak smoking chunks — 5kg
Kiln-dried English oak, fist-sized. Two chunks turns a roast into something else entirely.
Free with every unit
Bamboo and a
chimney starter
Every oven and every parrilla ships with 10kg of bamboo lump and a stainless chimney starter. Not a sample sachet — a full bag, enough for three or four proper cooks.
Bamboo rather than halaban is a deliberate choice. It lights easily, so the first fire you build goes well. Once you know the unit, move up to halaban for the long cooks. Doing it the other way round is how people end up standing in the garden at four o'clock swearing at a chimney.
The 80 Cabinet ships with 30kg, because it's a bigger fire and because anyone buying it is going to get through it.
Where it comes from
The only charcoal
with a licence
Wood charcoal falls under the UK's timber and deforestation rules, which means anyone importing it must be able to evidence that the wood was legally harvested. A great deal of cheap barbecue charcoal on the UK market cannot, and most of it does not have to tell you so.
Our halaban is FLEGT licensed. Indonesia is the only country in the world operating a FLEGT licensing scheme, and the UK signed a partnership agreement with them in 2019 that it still honours. Every consignment carries a government-issued licence, verified at origin and checked against customs data on the way in.
That is not a logo we bought. It is a document, and we will send you a copy of the one that came with your sack if you ask for it.
Why we chose Indonesia
We looked around
and only one worked
| Origin | Legality status | What that means for you |
|---|---|---|
| Indonesia | Operational FLEGT licensing, UK agreement since 2019 | Government-verified legal at origin. Nothing to take on trust. |
| Vietnam | Agreement signed, no licences being issued | Importer carries the whole burden. Known route for wood of contested origin. |
Not sure how much you need?
Register and tell us which unit you're after. When we launch we'll tell you what to order, and it is usually less than people expect.
Register interest