What is Binchotan Charcoal?

What is Binchotan? It has been acclaimed by some as the Best among the charcoal family. Is it really true?

Binchotan originates from Wakayama, Kyushu Prefecture, Japan. Traditionally, Binchotan is made from Oak wood. It takes about 10 ­ 40 years for the suitable grown branches to be selected for making Binchotan. Due to the hardness of the wood, the charcoal made from such wood produces a high pitch 'tingling' sound. Binchotan is also called White Charcoal because it is covered with ash during the final processing, leaving whitish ash powder on its surface.

It has been so famous in Japan until recent times when Bamboo Charcoal has taken it place after research has proven that it has less absorptive power than Bamboo Charcoal. The key advantage of Binchotan is that its electrical conductivity is excellent and often better than Bamboo Charcoal. Making it very suitable for Electromagnetic (EM) Wave reduction. But with research and technological advancements, Bamboo Charcoal has reached the point where it is very close to Binchotan in electrical conductivity.

As the famous Binchotan gained popularity in the world. Imitated Binchotans start to flood the market. Wood charcoal are labelled as 'Binchotan' by commercial companies but the materials used is Redwood etc. In Japan, only the wood charcoal made from specific Oak wood is officially recognised as Binchotan. One of the key physical appearance is the crystal like shiny cross sectional area.

Is there a difference that I buy any charcoal?

So how about the bamboo charcoal we talked about here? If a customer decides to buy charcoal, we advised for demonstration request at point of puchases or testing using personal test kit like light bulb circuit, multimeter, chemical dye etc. For instance, customer pays for high quality charcoal products price but gets low quality charcoal, similar to BBQ charcoal. We advise customer to head straight for BBQ charcoal instead. You will get more BBQ charcoal for what you pay with more effects!