How can I get a lot of coal in Minecraft?

One of the recent Minecraft updates that rolled out made it no longer necessary to mine for coal. Now you can smelt wood to make charcoal, which works exactly like regular coal.

Step 1: Make a Tree Farm

Lay out a dirt floor and cover it with alternating rows of torches and saplings. If you do this indoors, make the room at least 15 blocks high so the trees can grow tall enough to yield a decent amount of logs.

Saplings will grow into trees if they are given enough light, and the torches ensure they’re always lit (especially essential indoors). Every few minutes, trees will spawn in your farm. Chop them down and collect the wood. The leaves will decay and drop saplings which you can use to replace the trees you’ve chopped down.

Step 2: Turn Wood to Charcoal

Set up a few furnaces and get to work smelting your wood. Craft some of the wood into planks and use them to smelt the rest of the wood into charcoal. Load up each furnace with a 64 block of wood and about 42 planks. If you want to keep things even, smelt 60 wood with 40 planks. After a few minutes you will have a stack of charcoal.

Step 3: Repeat as Needed

By the time you finish loading up your furnaces and making charcoal, there will be plenty of new trees waiting to be chopped down. You can pretty much go back and forth between your tree farm and workshop, chopping down wood and smelting it into charcoal. Since leaves decay and drop saplings which can be grown into new trees, which can then be made into charcoal, you now have an unlimited supply of fuel.