The products obtained by carbonization of a mixture of hydrothermally dewatered acid washed Victorian brown coal and coking coal tar pitch, which had been briquetted at 150 or 230 degrees C and air cured were shown to approach blast furnace (BF) coke in many of their properties. The samples had higher strength than BF coke and showed surface areas and reactivities much closer to those of a typical BF coke than products from non-hydrothermally dewatered Victorian brown coal prepared under similar conditions. The reactivity showed a good correlation with the relative amount of graphitic structure determined by Raman spectroscopy. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.