Premium Binchotan All-Natural Hardwood Charcoal – Century-Old Kiln Carbonized Techniques – Smokeless, Long-Lasting, High Heat, Low Ash – Ideal for Japanese Style Yakitori & Outdoor BBQ (11, Pounds)

Excellent quantity for the value, excellent burn time. It was easy to use a stove or a blowtorch in order to light them, and we have already grilled a few times. They burn slowly and evenly, and give our bbq a delicious flavor. The smoke is also nominal, we grilled in our urban backyard with little issue. I would highly recommend for the ~$45 I paid for it, however it looks like the price is creeping up.

I have no idea how to effectively light this stuff

Great product

For yakitori grilling these are the thing. Very dense and heavy. Burn really hot and for a good long while.

The packaging and content is great. You get great sized charcoal (along with some medium and smaller pieces). It's not amazing for American style BBQ which usually favors high concentrated heat instead of this which appears to be better for localized/radiant heat.Some of the charcoals heated unevenly compared to the others, but that could have been user error on my part.Still, if you know what you're buying when you order this then it's going to be solid.

Easy to light up. Just have some starters ready right by them

Never seen bincho smoke so much when lighting. Burns fine though after it gets hot. Not recommended for indoor grilling or under eaves as the smoke is really intense.

Bincho-tan is a charcoal traditionally made from Japanese Ubame Oak and the finished pieces look like 3-D copies of the branches they were made from. Bincho-tan’s claim to fame is its high (up to 95%) carbon content vs. the ~75% carbon content of typical BBQ charcoal. With adequate oxygen, burning carbon will generate a lot of radiant (infrared) heat and carbon dioxide (CO2) gas, but no smoke nor odor-causing byproducts. Japanese-style table top grills, such as Yakitori or Hibachi grills, are designed to take advantage of this Infrared energy by placing the food just a few inches away from the coals. Note that the farther away from the coals the food sits, the less cooking benefit you get from radiant heating; Kettle-type (“weber”) grills and ceramic “egg” grills can certainly burn Bincho-tan, but they aren’t really optimized for this type of charcoal.Although they use the Bincho-tan carbonization process, this BINCHO-YAKI HERO brand charcoal is made in Indonesia using Fruitwood rather than Ubame Oak. This difference explains the significantly lower price-point vs. “genuine” Japanese Bincho-tan. That said, once the wood has been converted to carbon, any differences in the original wood species used are largely irrelevant.The large number of “how-to” videos available on-line attest to the challenges many folks experience in getting (and keeping) Bincho-tan lit, which can take up-to-30 minutes. The instructions on the box recommend starting this in a charcoal chimney, which is helpful, but the most important detail is to avoid packing the charcoal too tightly. Open space between the charcoal pieces is what allows air to get in (you can’t convert carbon to CO2 without oxygen); a bellows, or even a hair dryer, will also help move oxygen into the combustion zone.In Short: This BINCHO-YAKI HERO branded product is 92+% carbon, looks like it should, and even makes the tell-tale ceramic “clink” of high-carbon charcoal. Sourcing from Indonesia makes this an economical choice for fueling your Yakitori or Hibachi grill.