Charcoal Calculator

Burn rates by cooker

Kettles burn ~12 briquettes/hour at smoking temps; bullets ~10; kamados sip at ~6 (ceramic insulation); offsets drink ~45 briquette-equivalents of splits (they are wood-burners with a fuel appetite). The rates assume 225–250°F — every 25°F hotter adds ~20% burn.

The extended-burn tricks

The Minion method (unlit ring surrounding a lit starter) and the snake method (fused briquette chain) let kettles run 12–18 hours on one load — the fuel baseline is for standard firing, and the tricks are how overnight cooks survive without 3 AM refills.

Weather is a fuel multiplier

Cold ambient air and wind strip heat: winter cooks burn 20–35% more, and wind without a windbreak can destabilize temperature entirely. The weather multiplier prices it — and the windbreak (a windshield, not the house siding) is the cheapest temperature-stability upgrade in live-fire cooking.