Hardwood charcoal briquettes with one ingredient. Mechanically pressed. Kiln-fired. Zero chemicals, zero binders, zero BS. Just wood and science.
Founder pricing for the first 500. No spam, ever.
Compression. Pyrolysis. Two steps. Zero chemicals. Here's exactly what happens.
Hardwood sawdust from New England sawmills β oak, maple, birch. A byproduct headed for landfill gets a second life. Local. Traceable. Sustainable.
Our screw press applies 20 tons of friction force. Moisture gets squeezed out. The wood's natural lignin activates under heat and pressure, binding the briquette into a dense hollow-core shape. No glue. No binders. Physics does the work.
The pressed white briquettes enter our retort at 500Β°C+ with zero oxygen. Volatile compounds burn away. What's left is nearly pure carbon β 65.57% fixed, delivering 6,416 kcal/kg. The hollow core ensures even carbonization throughout. No dead spots.
Pyrolysis. From the Greek pyr (fire) and lysis (separation). Heat wood without oxygen and something beautiful happens β the volatile compounds burn away, leaving behind nearly pure carbon. No smoke. No tar. Just the element itself.
That's the science behind every bag of Arc Light. But how you get there matters. Most briquette makers take cheap char of unknown origin, grind it to dust, and glue it back together with borax, sodium nitrate, limestone, and starch. Read the label on America's best-selling briquette sometime β it's a chemistry experiment.
We took a different path. Start with local hardwood sawdust. Press it under 20 tons of force β the wood's own lignin binds it naturally. Then fire it at 500Β°C+ in the absence of oxygen. Two steps. Zero chemicals. The result is a hollow-core briquette that burns hotter, cleaner, and longer than anything held together by glue.
We didn't set out to reinvent charcoal. We just asked: what if we made it honestly?
Air flows through the center like a chimney. Faster ignition. Complete combustion. Every gram burns. No dense, dead centers.
6,416 kcal/kg. 65.57% fixed carbon. 0.05% sulfur. Not marketing β numbers from an independent lab you can verify yourself.
Every bag traces to local sawmills. Short supply chain. Real provenance. Your neighbors' timber, not mystery char from overseas.
Near-zero sulfur. Low smoke. No lighter fluid taste on your brisket. Your lungs (and your neighbors) will notice.
Sawmill residue that would've hit a landfill becomes premium cooking fuel. Good for the grill. Good for the planet.
Two-step process. Compress, then fire. Takes longer than dumping chemicals in a mold. Worth it every time.
First 500 on the waitlist get founder pricing + a say in what we build.
No spam. Just fire updates.