So, you wanna cook some meat? Smelt some ores? Forge some stone? Typically, if you’re burning stuff, then you’re gonna need fuel. The most common form of this is coal, but what if you don’t like coal? What if you’ve never mined a day in your life? That probably isn’t the case, but let’s just say you aren’t the ‘finite’ kinda guy. You like a little renewable action, so to speak. Then I got the thing for you, Charcoal!
Char-what?
So, what exactly is Charcoal? Well, it’s kind of a niche aspect of Minecraft for a couple reasons. It can best be described as an alternative to Coal. Typically, if you wanted to fuel your furnaces or make torches, you would go mine some Coal. Instead, you can use Charcoal. But how exactly do you obtain it? Well, it’s pretty simple.
Charcoal Minecraft Recipe
Where to find charcoal in Minecraft
All you need to do to make Charcoal is smelt any wooden log in a furnace, and that will create one Charcoal. That’s it! “But wait!” I hear you shout “What will I use to smelt the log?” I don’t necessarily care. A wooden sword, a stick, coal, or even other logs. It doesn’t really matter. As long as you smelt it.
Charcoal acts as an alternative to Coal, having 80 seconds of smelting time, the exact same as Coal. This makes the transformation of logs into Charcoal more efficient than any other use of wood as fuel.
It is worth noting that Charcoal cannot stack with Coal, and although they are functionally the same, they are different. Charcoal is more of a lazy man’s Coal. The downside of using Charcoal rather than Coal is the fact that it cannot be crafted into a block variant. If you weren’t aware, Coal can be crafted into a Block of Coal which not only allows each furnace to house more fuel in one slot, but also burns for 800 seconds. This is actually 10x as efficient as a single Coal, making it more efficient to use blocks. This is the only functional advantage that Coal has.
Trivia
– Powered Minecarts can only be powered by Charcoal and Coal.
– Smelting logs with Charcoal as a fuel source will unlock the “Renewable Energy” Achievement.
– Originally, Charcoal had the same texture as Coal, making life very confusing, especially since they did not stack. The texture was later changed to an original texture.
– Breaking a Campfire without Silk Touch drops some Charcoal.
Conclusion
So, that’s all you need to know to setup your fuel plans. Vanilla Minecraft doesn’t have a lot of situations where you’ll run out of fuel anyway, but assuming you never want to mine again, and want completely renewable energy, a tree farm can be the way to go. Charcoal isn’t my first choice when I need to make a ton of Stone, or smelt all my ores at once, but you do you, man. With that said, I hope you all have a great day!
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