Cookswell Energy Saving Jikos and Charcoal Ovens

The Cookswell Branch Charcoal Method. How to make charcoal without cutting down trees!

Grow and make your own charcoal to cook wonderful food on high quality jikos at minimal cost with maximum returns!

With the new ''seed-to-ash'' biomass energy kiln and tree seed kit, you can easily grow your own money! Of course in the form of:

Timber
Posts
Charcoal and firewood from the branches
Live Fences
Bio-Medicine (species specific)

A whole tree is far too valuable to just be turned into charcoal alone. We will always need trees for timber, to cook with and for their keystone ecosystem services - the least we can do when we use the trees we have grown, is to do so to their maximum value.

The following 3 steps is a brief guide to a simple field tested and market proven method of 100% self-reliance on an easy to grow fuel source; branch charcoal.

Step One 1: Plant and Grow Trees!!! - Our rule of thumb is that you will regret planting one less tree than one more tree 20 years from now. So grow more trees! :)

If you are unable to dig holes or get plastic bag seedlings, try out our NEW no-till broadcast seeding biochar seedballs (more info here http://www.seedballskenya.com/home/4592985892)

Step 2: Make the charcoal! With a Cookswell woodfuel independence kit (6,500ksh - small kiln, tree seeds http://cookswell.co.ke/our-products/category/kilns ) all you have to do is implement a rotational management forestry plan. You can easily prune your trees for branches and then carbonize them in your mini-kiln. The carbonization process to fill this mini-kiln takes 8 hours (appx. 7-9kgs). It also makes charcoal that is perfectly sized for an energy saving jiko.

Sealing off the kiln to cool

The large charcoal making kiln below produces appx. 30kgs of charcoal per 8hours from 100kgs of wood/maize cobs/coconuts etc.

You can also trap the smoke and make wood vinegar and wood tar for on farm termite proofing!

SEE HERE FOR HOW TO MAKE YOUR OWN WOOD VINEGAR http://kenyacharcoal.blogspot.co.ke/2016/05/how-to-make-your-own-wood-vinegar-with.html

You can also use your kiln to make your own Biochar as well from all sorts of woody biomass feedstocks.

Step 3: Buy a Cookswell Jiko and cook great food! Below are a few pictures of just some of our wonderful high quality jikos that are perfect for home or commercial use.

Portable catering at its best!

Impress you customers with our specialty animal shaped BBQs

A large oven at a bakery (70,00ksh)

Two medium ovens (left one is the safari model) a mini oven and a space heater

Cook excellant pizzas on your charcoal oven

At the Ubuntu Cafe, in Mai- Mahiu with the amazing Pop-up Nairobi!

A great pizza photo from http://www.riftvalleyadventures.com/ - please send us yours for a B2B shout out!

or as a trial of a jiko - feel free to bring over your own ingredients and cook pizza and enjoy lunch in one of Cookswell's Forests.

at only 5-8 min each - these were a perfect treat.

Mt Kenya Cookswell Jikos collection points

Save time, money and energy and pick up a new charcoal saving jiko at any of these places in the Mt. Kenya area -

Kisima Farm shop - just past Timau

And you can find the original Kenya Ceramic Jiko on Kimathi Road (just past the Nakumatt Nanyuki) at Cherengani Hardware Store -

And at Barney's Airstrip (just behind the shop at the restaurant)

We now ship country wide inconjuction with G4S - Appx. 2-3 day delivery.

medium 3 level (22,000ksh) and a small 2 level (10,000ksh) charcoal oven - nation wide shipping is 2,000ksh and 4,000ksh respectively.

The 10,000ksh small 2 level oven being weighed - 2,000ksh nationwide shipping.

The Cookswell space heater - kibabs

Grilled chicken and mango? Excellent!

Keeping warm and cooking bitings!

Baking homestyle bread rolls using homegrown wheat cooked with homemade charcoal at Kisima Farm, Timau.

Baking stone ground whole wheat fresh Kisima bread rolls and bread at the Kisima Petrol station just past Timau. All of the charcoal used in the oven is made from pruned branches of trees grown on the farm. This means that their energy cost is so low these delicious bread rolls are only 10bob each! They make and sell more then 200 a day and in total per day use a bit less then the box of charcoal in the picture.

letting the bread rolls rise.

the Kisima stone ground all natural flour.

The Large Cookswell Charcoal oven - only 38,000ksh

Sirikoi Camp, Lewa Downs, 100% off-grid renewable biomass energy system for cooking and heating.

Sirikoi Camp in Lewa Downs currently has the best fully working sustainable domestic biomass energy production and use systems in all of Northern Kenya.
They use a Kinyanjui barrel kiln to carbonize sustainably pruned and harvested (and sometimes branches stripped by passing elephants!) twigs and branches from their own yellow fever tree's and use this high quality lumpwood charcoal to power the camps Cookswell charcoal ovens and space heaters.

The colliers with their new kiln and a KCJ

A large and a medium 4 level oven.

The most delicious teatime treats baked at camp using the neighbors locally grown wheat and Sirikoi's own homegrown charcoal.

The Kinyanjui barrel kiln that uses only twigs and branches to make the charcoal needed for the camps cooking.

About Cookswell Jikos

Cookswell Jikos is a small but growing family owned Kenyan business. We provide our customers with professional charcoal and wood fueled stoves, portable convection ovens, BBQ's, smokers, space heaters and charcoal making kilns.

Roast, bake, steam, or smoke your food in our efficient, easy to use cookers. Our products are handcrafted in Kenya by professionally trained Kenyan artisans.

The designs continue to improve with over 18 years with constant consumer feedback.

We proudly include a free packet of acacia tree seeds with every stove and oven purchased to further the goal of making charcoal a sustainable energy source. We also sell a wide variety of indigenous tree seeds and seedlings with our partner, The Woodlands 2000 Trust http://www.woodlands2000trust.org/ for planting around Kenya.

Cookswell Jikos promotes the sustainable production, management and processing of wood fuels as one of the many renewable energy resources for East Africa’s cooking needs.

We also make innovative, simple to use portable, mobile kilns to make your own free charcoal at home from branches, twigs, maize cobs, coconut husks and other woody biomass.

Order your new stove or oven and have it delivered to any major town in Kenya. We also have a network of local transport providers for delivery around East Africa and beyond.

Save money, Save energy and Eat Well with Cookswell!