Charcoal is made from assorted scrap woods the producers can acquire at the time like pine, myrtle, and others depending on location and season. Usually these scraps come from lumber mills and other sources of large quantities of scrap wood. The scraps may be the same type of wood or combinations of wood types.
The wood scraps are ground up, heated, and compressed into briquettes. The heat of the wood actually bakes all of the resins out of the wood leaving almost pure carbon behind. After baking, the remaining carbon bits are placed into molds and compressed into shapes called briquettes. This carbon is lightweight and burns at a high temperature, which makes it a good source of heat.
Briquettes produce the heat and are easy to use, but do not give that BBQ flavor which comes from real wood. They have been used in barbecues because of their convenience as a heat source. There is no smoke given off from well lit and burning charcoal, just heat which is great for cooking food but not flavoring it. That is way real barbecued food comes from real wood smoke. The SmokePistol™ and GrillKicker™ are both unique, patented devices designed to deliver the more flavor to barbecued food while utilizing very little of the right types of wood.