Smoke flavor


 
R

Ron Hunter

TVWBB Member
Is it possible that smoke wood can be too dry? I've noticed that I have less smoke flavor than ever before. This weekend, I smoked 4 butts - 8-9 lbs. Plus two racks of spares.

I used the minion method for the butts, when they were thru I put a full chimney of lit coals back in the WSM and added more smoke wood. All were moist and tender - but for all practical purposes - no wood flavor! For the butts I used a mixture of cherry & Hickory (2/3 - 1/3) about 6 or more fists. For the spares about 5 fists of only cherry. All the wood was placed dry - no water added.

My cherry is at least 3 years oldand kept in my wood shop. The hickory was purchased about 6 months ago.

Where's the smoke flavor gone? I can only imagine the wood is too dry. Which means I need to discard the cherry or start soaking it before use.

What do ya'll think the problem is?
 
Ron, two thoughts...reverse the mix, use 2/3's hickory and if the wood is hard and still has heft-weight, I doubt it is too old. Sometimes staying close to the fire dulls the senses if you know what I mean.
 
Steve - Thanks for the reply. The wood is pretty light. I had a piece of cherry that was about 16'x6'. Used my bandsaw to cut into usable pieces. I did notice there wasn't much weight to the piece.

Tonight I tasted some of the que that I didn't freeze - I really couldnt taste any smoke flavor. I understand your point of being too close to the fire but since it's been 24hrs I don't think that's the problem. Especially since my wife said the same thing - not near as much flavor as it should have had. I think next time, I'll soak the cherry a few days before and take it out a day before I plan to use it.

I think you nailed it with the "heft-weight." That really makes sense.

At worst - I could buy some more cherry. Which is undoubtly my favorite smoke wood.
 
Am I miss-reading or are you adding your smoke wood after they have cooked??

Also if your wood is dry and you are cooking at higher heat (like a full chimney) the wood could be combusting rather then smoking.

Are you still getting any blue smoke when you do this??
 
For the 4 butts I used the minion' method. Smoke wood was placed in the briqs and around the 24 lighted briq's - that was for the night smoke.

The next afternoon when I put the spares on and added a fully lit chimney. The cherry wood on top of the coals.

I've never added smoke wood after the meat was cooked.

For both of them I got white smoke - no blue. Whether combusting or not - I didn't look.
 
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