Cart 0
Pohutukawa BBQ Wood Oak BBQ Wood Manuka BBQ Wood Apple BBQ Wood Cherry BBQ Wood Peach BBQ Wood Plum BBQ Wood Black Walnut BBQ Wood Guava BBQ Wood Puriri BBQ Wood / Brazier Wood Gum Brazier Wood Totara Brazier Wood
Cart 0
WOOD & FIRE
 
 

Fire up your
primal side

Since the Stone Age, humans have used fire to cook, protect and craft. The tools have changed (and our knuckles don’t drag on the ground any more), but the principles of splitting, stacking and seasoning wood for smoking remain pretty much the same. It’s primal!

Here at Urban Lumberjack, we’ve refined that ancient tradition into a fine art. Guided by an international palate, we fuse expert BBQ wood seasoning techniques with New Zealand native hardwoods to craft unique flavours and aromas.

Suitable for BBQ, Braii and Asado, our products are seasoned in small batches and aged from six months to two years – making every log a masterpiece.

 
ULJ-226631-2560px.jpg

Our BBQ Woods and
brazier Woods

 

Insist on the good wood.

Specialising in native hardwoods, we offer a variety of BBQ wood splits and chunks for ‘low and slow’ smoking including Pohutukawa, Oak, Manuka and Puriri, while Gum and Totara are perfect for the brazier or log burner.

Fruit woods like Apple, Cherry, Peach and Plum are seasonally sourced and lend a delicate smokey note to BBQ, while Black Walnut brings a rich and strong flavour profile.

While the best wood for smoking depends on the BBQ you’re using, the type of meat you’re cooking, and your own personal preference, quality always matters. Just because seasoning is a preservation process doesn’t mean you can use any spongy old plank!

We deliver crisp, punchy, flavoursome logs and cuts, aiming to expand people’s palates and demonstrate the difference quality wood makes.

 

Why choose our wood?

Our total focus is to bring specialty New Zealand hardwoods destined for the chipper, or worse; left to rot, back to life to provide warmth, flavour and love.

All our wood is ethically and locally sourced – nothing is imported. Typically our wood comes from storm damaged (blow down) or consented removal because of age, or if the tree has become a risk to people or property. We don’t just chop down trees to enhance the view and line our pockets.

Our wood is all naturally seasoned, meaning it’s stacked outside to weather in the sun, wind and rain, it’s then bagged and moved inside. Seasoning time varies between the different species, the time of year they were felled and the quality of the summer drying weather. Our logs come with the bark on unless it falls off. None of our product is kiln dried.

urban-lumberjack-why-choose-our-wood.jpg
 

Seasonal Fruit BBQ Wood

 
 
 
Apple BBQ Wood.jpg

Apple

BBQ Wood

Buy wood →
Cherry BBQ Wood.jpg

Cherry

BBQ Wood

Buy wood →
Plum BBQ Wood

Plum

BBQ Wood

Buy wood →
Black Walnut BBQ Wood .jpg

Black Walnut

BBQ Wood

Buy wood →
Peach BBQ Wood.jpg

Peach

BBQ Wood

Buy wood →
 

Pohutukawa BBQ Wood

The tree of beaches, brews, and BBQs.

An icon almost as famous as the All Blacks, Pohutukawa is the official Christmas tree of New Zealand. When it flowers, it reminds us of all the good times the coming summer will bring. Blue skies, warm seas, lazy beach days… and most importantly, delicious BBQs!

If you like to smoke meat, you'll know that Pohutukawa wood in New Zealand is like Post Oak in Texas – the Eldorado! It’s very dense and strong, producing high sustainable heat, beautiful coals and a distinctive flavour profile loved by BBQ aficionados.

It's hard to get wood this good – so if you have an offset smoker like a Yoder, Traeger, Oklahoma Joe, Lone Star Grillz, Texas Original, Charmate or similar setup, you’ve found your source of top-grade smoking log splits. Also available in chunks for Weber Kettle, Weber Smokey Mountain, Big Green Egg, Kamado Joe and Bullet Style Smokers.

Our Pohutukawa BBQ wood splits come in sustainable hessian sacks measuring 79cm x 48cm and weighing 15-20kg, while our Pohutukawa wood chunks come in a 3kg sustainable jute drawstring bag. Once you’ve smoked all the wood the drawstring bag will become summer’s hottest accessory! The chunks are naturally seasoned and cut to just the right sizes, these are ready to go.

Flavour profile:



 
urban-lumberjack-pohutukawa-bbq-wood.jpg

Expertly
Seasoned

Perfectly seasoned, ethically sourced BBQ smoking and cooking wood from local family in Auckland. Even our humour is beautifully dry. Just because seasoning is a preservation process doesn’t mean you can use any old spongey old plank. We want to give our customers crisp, punchy and flavoursome logs and cuts. Most of all, we want to expand people’s palates and prove that good wood can make all the difference.

 

Oak BBQ Wood

If it’s good enough for the Texans, it’s good enough for us.

The mystical Oak is perhaps the most important tree in history. Its extreme hardness and toughness has made Oak the choice of craftsmen for centuries, a staple in everything from cathedrals to legendary Viking longships. Those same properties make Oak the ultimate wood to fire your BBQ.

Oak produces a lovely, distinctive colour in most smoked foods, and is recommended by Franklin BBQ for beef brisket – it’s a staple for Texas style BBQ. It falls just above the middle of the spectrum for strength and flavour – typically milder than Hickory, but stronger than most fruit woods.

Our Oak wood splits come in sustainable hessian sacks measuring 79cm x 48cm and weighing 15-20kg, while our Oak wood chunks come in a 3kg sustainable jute drawstring bag. All naturally seasoned and cut to just the right sizes, these are ready to go.

Flavour profile:



Oak-BG-Fade-5-2560px.jpg

“the results are simply amazing.”

— M. Wright, Herne Bay, Auckland

Manuka BBQ Wood

Tastes better than nostalgia.

A firm favourite in the New Zealand fishing community, many Kiwis will have the smell of Manuka sawdust smouldering in a smoker indelibly etched in their early memories.

It’s a wonderful wood, perfect for smoking trout and kawahai. But as a nation we’ve definitely branched out in our use of Manuka over the past decade. It’s a very dense wood, and when properly seasoned it produces clean smoke, beautiful long-lasting coals and a robust medium-to-strong flavour profile.

Our Manuka/Kanuka BBQ wood splits come in sustainable hessian sacks measuring 79cm x 48cm and weighing 15-20kg, while our Manuka/Kanuka BBQ wood chunks come in a 3kg sustainable jute drawstring bag. Also available are Umu/Hangi Bundles which have 6 x lengths measuring 90cm and weighing 15kg±. All naturally seasoned and cut to just the right sizes, these are ready to go.

Flavour profile:



 
manuka-bbq-wood-2560px.jpg

Puriri BBQ Wood / Brazier Wood

Good things take time. Great things take even longer.

Puriri wood is a rarity on the New Zealand BBQ scene, and notoriously difficult to season for the impatient. Assuming that it’s covered and left in the wind and sun, Puriri needs upwards of two years to get the moisture content down to 20% (even if you cut it into fine pieces).

Puriri wood is a very dense, very hard native timber with a greenish dark-brown hue (sometimes nearly black or streaked with yellow). Beautifully mild and subtle, Puriri won’t overpower your food in long cooks. If you’re keen to increase the flavour profile, we recommend mixing it with Manuka blocks.

When properly dry Puriri BBQ wood / brazier wood burns consistently, develops great coals, and is the hottest burning timber Urban Lumberjack has ever tested. A little goes a long way!

A firm favourite as a heat source in the Far North, Puriri has burnt through many a grate, in many a fire. Try it in your brazier but stand back!

Our Puriri BBQ wood splits come in sustainable hessian sacks measuring 79cm x 48cm and weighing 15-20kg.

Flavour profile:



 
david-boca-512386-unsplash.jpg

“the flavour that it imparts is incredible!”

— M. Sheehan, Green Bay, Auckland

 

Gum Brazier Wood

Gum brazier and log burner wood burns slow, clean and hot when properly seasoned and dried.

We have a small amount of Gum hardwood timber to get you through the winter. You’ll never have to buy crappy supermarket logs again.

Gum burns at a very high temperature, ideal for maximum heat output. We recommend the upside down method for starting your Gum fire.

Our Gum brazier wood splits come in sustainable hessian sacks measuring 79cm x 48cm and weighing 15-20kg. All naturally seasoned and cut to 25-30cm, these will fit all braziers and most log burners.

Heat output:



Gum-Seasoned-Wide1-2560px.jpg

Totara Brazier Wood

The grandaddy of firewoods.

Totara is quite possibly the best firewood around – the go-to wood for those in the know.

It's hard to find, but when you do get your hands on it you'll really notice the difference. Totara burns ferociously, producing a generous flame and large coals. It’s ideal for braziers on a cool summer night or for heating your home on a cool winters night.

Our Totara has very low moisture content, and is all ready to go!

Heat output:



 
manuka-bbq-wood-2560px.jpg

About the Urban Lumberjack

The story of a lifelong wood obsession.

 

I’m the Urban Lumberjack, and I’ve loved chopping wood my whole life. My earliest memory, where I guess it all started, is visiting my Grandad in Upper Hutt at the age of four. His house backed onto the Tararua Ranges, and had trees everywhere. I had been watching the woodchopping at the local AMP show, and wanted to be like the legendary Sonny Bolstad.

I begged Grandad for a week to let me chop down a tree, telling him I was big enough to wield his axe (or worst case, his tomahawk). When we were due to leave and I still hadn’t chopped down my tree, I took matters into my own hands. I grabbed the axe, sneaked out, and went to work on the trunk of some poor tree in the backyard. I remember thinking it was weird as I chopped away that there weren’t many chunks and chips – just dust, and massive wetas.

Finally I bludgeoned through the trunk and was about to yell “Timber” when the tree just fell off the stump, landed flush on the ground, and remained standing. The tree was a punga, and to this day (forty years on) I feel ripped off!

As an adult, any opportunity to get the chainsaw and axes out is welcomed with open arms. All the dramas of life seem to melt away as you end up with a pile of wood to stack, season and find a home for. Every little nook and cranny at my house is full of wood. My wife thinks I’m crazy as we don’t have a fire.

Fortunately, my love of firewood has also allowed me to explore my other great love – BBQ.

I love the idea that much of the wood I gather, split and stack would have been left to rot – or worse, mulched. When I sell it on to the New Zealand BBQ community, it's like the phoenix – on its way back to providing enjoyment and good times while adding amazing flavour to great cuts of meat.

Knowing that wood is the very beginning of people’s good times inspires me. The experience of starting the fire, cracking a beer and turning out mouthwateringly tender cuts never gets old. Having my mates over to assist and the local takeaway store on speed dial in case I stuff it up is all part of the community aspect that I love too.

I’ve come to embrace this state, as I’ve learned there are plenty of people around with the same problem. The Urban Lumberjack is me, the Urban Lumberjack is you.

Welcome to the obsession!