This charcoal comes to us from CanaSAf Traders, LTD, a Canadian company focused on bringing African products to North America. The have offices in Vancouver and Calgary. The charcoal is presently available in the Vancouver area, but there are plans to expand.
This charcoal is made from four woods that we bet you haven't heard of before. We certainly haven't, which is understandable since we have never reviewed a product from Africa before. Here they are:
- Lowveld cluster leaf (Terminalia prunioides)
- Mopane (Colophospernum mop)
- Black Thorn (Acacia mellifera)
- Wild Teak (Pterocarpus angolensi), only trees that have died naturally and have no economic timber value are used.
These woods are fine grained hardwoods with a very high density. Oak and maple timber typically weigh 1,100 lbs per cubic yard where these woods weigh in the vicinity of 2,300 lbs per cubic yard.
If you are concerned about destruction of rainforest or consumption of woods used by the local population for subsistence fuel, this information comes from CanaSAf:
"We only use invader bush and introduced varieties in our products.
All products are obtained under export permit form the Directorate of Forestry from Namibia.
No endangered species are used in the production of the charcoal."
Also this:
"Only invader-bush and declared weeds that are part of a savanna-reclaiming program to reverse the effects of overgrazing and bad land management is used in charcoal production. Permits are issued on a batch-by-batch basis to ensure that charcoal production is a sustainable economic activity. They are not using wood that forms part of subsistence fuel for the local people. The production area in Namibia is not in the desert but the northeastern quarter of the country where cattle farming is a major economic activity. These trees are thorn trees and the cattle have trouble in grazing of these trees. It forms impenetrable clusters as it grows and pushes the grass for grazing out of existence.
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As production increases, they will be looking for other sources of charcoal:
"In order to meet demand we will procure charcoal from similar varieties of trees from other Southern African states to fulfill the demand (Botswana, South Africa, Mozambique). The same conditions for harvesting of these resources will apply. We will only supply product made from varieties not on CITES lists but with the same hard wood characteristics.
"
Incidentally, CITES is the Convention on International Trade In Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora.
Upon opening the bag, we found a very dense charcoal. The distribution of sizes was quite disappointing. The bag contained only one piece we would call large. The amount of chips and dust was extreme. 1.93 kilograms, or 38.6% of the bag was composed of chips and dust. We were surprised at this amount, so we opened up the second bag that we had in order to see if perhaps the first bag was just a fluke. The second bag contained 1.55 kilograms, or 31% chips and dust, still a very large percentage. Most bags average around 10-14% chips and dust. We don't believe this was caused by the shipping of the charcoal since it was securely packed and the box showed no signs of abuse.
The bag contained no uncarbonized wood and no scrap. It did contain a few strands of plastic material. It looked like the sort of material that they use to make plastic mesh bags that you buy potatoes or fruit in. You can see a photo below of the material. It was quite small and nothing to be concerned about.
The charcoal took 4 sheets of newspaper to start in our chimney starter test, which was a pleasant surprise. Many times, very dense charcoals are hard to start, but this charcoal was only moderately so. The smell as it burned was a relatively strong wood smoke smell, with a slight smell of ammonia. We don't know why some charcoals smell of ammonia, but several brands that we have tried do. One was made from South American woods, one was made from coconut, and now this brand which is made from the woods specified above. As such, we don't believe this to be caused by any particular species of wood.
The charcoal burned an average length of time, ranking "average" on our five-step scale above. The ash production was surprisingly very high, almost as much as some briquettes that we have played around with.
We burned a sample of the charcoal in a small ceramic cooker. The fire is quite slow to spread, but it will get to very high temperatures if you allow it time. This charcoal burned about as hot as any that we have tested. When igniting the charcoal with a MAPP torch, we observed that while the amount of sparking was less than many charcoals, the vigor of the sparking was pretty significant. There were some large pops and one should take care in using a torch to light this lump. On the other hand, we also observed that when actually burning in the cooker, there is very little sparking.
We were somewhat concerned with the ammonia smell, so we decided to cook with it and conduct a taste test. We cooked some chicken tenders over Royal Oak in one cooker and over HardCoals in another. We called in our resident taste tester (the wife) to do a blind taste test. I also tasted the chicken, knowing which was which. The wife and I both agreed that the Royal Oak tasted more smokey, and the HardCoals tasted more "chickeny". In other words, the HardCoals chicken had less smokiness to it and you tasted the meat more than the smoke. My wife preferred the HardCoals chicken, while I preferred the smokiness of the Royal Oak chicken. Needless to say, this is a matter of personal preference. The important result of this test was that there were no bad or "off" flavors imparted to the chicken by the HardCoals charcoal and we are willing to accept that this ammonia smell is not important.
At this writing, this charcoal is available in the Vancouver, BC area. However, sales in Eastern Canada are imminent and sales in the United States should soon follow. You can find a list of current dealers on their website.
While the charcoal burned long and clean and added little flavor to the food, the very large amount of chips and dust in the product and the large amount of ash produced by this charcoal put it at a level below most of the charcoals we have reviewed. Even with a price that works out to about $11 per 20 pounds, we expect more usable product than just 60-70% of each bag. And for a lump charcoal, we expect far, far less ash. This charcoal therefore gets a below average rating.
Note, however, that the CanaSAf, Ltd. plans to take our test results to the manufacturers and discuss potential changes to improve the amount of useable product in each bag. If this does happen, we plan to update this review and the rating of the charcoal after testing a new sample.
Where is Namibia? It is on the west coast of southern Africa, surrounded by South Africa, Botswana, Zambia and Angola.
