I think I’m good on hickory….

WildmanWilson

This big guy fell in a storm. I’d like to cut it for lumber but may be more than I want to take on. How long do you think it will take me to burn it in the Egg?

WeberWho

It cut it into lumber and use whatever scraps you have left for smoking wood. You will lose the moisture in the wood with it sitting to be burned up in the BGE. 

Ozzie_Isaac

WeberWho said:

It cut it into lumber and use whatever scraps you have left for smoking wood. You will lose the moisture in the wood with it sitting to be burned up in the BGE. 

I prefer my wood dried for 1-3 years.  You smoke it green?

WeberWho

If available I'd go half green/half dried if buying a face cord for the offset. Cutting all that into chunks would be a lifetime supply for the BGE. Plus chunks tend to dry out quicker. 

lousubcap

Regarding air drying wood, below contains a link from the Forest Products Lab that may provide some insights-(copied from a prior subject thread that I posted.)

"Air dried wood reaches an equilibrium with its environment.  Here is way more than you want to know about drying wood:
https://www.fpl.fs.usda.gov/documnts/fplgtr/fplgtr117.pdf  
Page 15 for the equilibrium moisture content of many locales in the USA.
Bottom line-wood exposed to an air drying environment will land at an equilibrium moisture content.
Kiln dried can get to the same place or different depending on the desired end result. There is nothing wrong with kiln dried wood.  It may have a lower moisture content than air dried but that's it.  
In a previous life I did spend a fair amount of time dealing with air and kiln dried timber in the baseball wood bat production realm.  FWIW-"

WeberWho

Moisture reader is cheap and comes in super handy 

HeavyG

Ozzie_Isaac said:

WeberWho said:

It cut it into lumber and use whatever scraps you have left for smoking wood. You will lose the moisture in the wood with it sitting to be burned up in the BGE. 

I prefer my wood dried for 1-3 years.  You smoke it green?

Both Aaron Franklin and Bill Karu (of KBQ fame) recommend seasoning less than 12 months. Aaron suggests 9-12 months and Bill goes for a wider range of 3-12 months.

Ozzie_Isaac

HeavyG said:

Ozzie_Isaac said:

WeberWho said:

It cut it into lumber and use whatever scraps you have left for smoking wood. You will lose the moisture in the wood with it sitting to be burned up in the BGE. 

I prefer my wood dried for 1-3 years.  You smoke it green?

Both Aaron Franklin and Bill Karu (of KBQ fame) recommend seasoning less than 12 months. Aaron suggests 9-12 months and Bill goes for a wider range of 3-12 months.

Those are two interesting data points.  Do you know the why behind their reasoning?

Money_Hillbilly

@WeberWho I have been experimenting with the smoke profile an my Shirley and the KBQ.  I have found that anything below 20% moisture whether oak, pecan, hickory or cherry provides hardly any smoke profile.  I have experimented with throttling the Shirley exhaust to hold smoke longer on the food but it doesn’t make much difference.  I have ordered some fresh cut oak and pecan to try.  Plan to build a big coal bed and add chunks of green wood while trying to balance smoke profile without stepping off into bitterness.  Your experience?

billt01

It's not bourbon.  if it catches fire, its dry enough for me..

WeberWho

Money_Hillbilly said:

@WeberWho I have been experimenting with the smoke profile an my Shirley and the KBQ.  I have found that anything below 20% moisture whether oak, pecan, hickory or cherry provides hardly any smoke profile.  I have experimented with throttling the Shirley exhaust to hold smoke longer on the food but it doesn’t make much difference.  I have ordered some fresh cut oak and pecan to try.  Plan to build a big coal bed and add chunks of green wood while trying to balance smoke profile without stepping off into bitterness.  Your experience?

I believe the green wood will help your situation. I've heard everything from people using green wood they just cut down to 6 months minimum. Your smoker will dictate where it's happy and how it wants to run. With my Shirley the vent on my firebox needs to be almost completely open with the exhaust the same way otherwise it doesn't want to run clean. It will be different with every smoker. 

The KBQ/Shirley is going to be a much lighter almost smoke profile compared to chunks of wood that sit and smolder at lower temperatures. Even with the gravity feed smoker where you can place chunks of wood under the fire grate to fully ignite them will be a slightly different flavor with the charcoal being used as the main heat source. 

I'd try some real green wood if you can get your hands on some and see if that helps your situation any. You can try adjusting your vent settings to see if that helps your situation but these smokers draft so well I'm not sure how much that will help in the end product.

lkapigian

All this talk of wood , I just hate wasting it

HeavyG

Ozzie_Isaac said:

HeavyG said:

Ozzie_Isaac said:

WeberWho said:

It cut it into lumber and use whatever scraps you have left for smoking wood. You will lose the moisture in the wood with it sitting to be burned up in the BGE. 

I prefer my wood dried for 1-3 years.  You smoke it green?

Both Aaron Franklin and Bill Karu (of KBQ fame) recommend seasoning less than 12 months. Aaron suggests 9-12 months and Bill goes for a wider range of 3-12 months.

Those are two interesting data points.  Do you know the why behind their reasoning?

Here's Bill Karu's reasoning:

HOW WOOD BURNS

It doesn’t – at least not directly. Here’s what happens to a log after it’s thrown into a fire:

1. Drying – that log is full of water. Green wood has ~80% (of dry weight) moisture; a 9 lb log = 5 lbs wood + 4 lbs water. Seasoned wood has ~20%, so the same log split and dried for a year will weigh 6 lbs. There’s still a pound (pint) of water that must boil out before the log’s temperature will rise over ~230F. Dessication makes lots of steam that helps keep your meat moist; it also consumes a lot of heat from the fire.
2. Decomposition – once the log is dry, heat-up resumes. The cellulose and lignin structure of wood breaks down at high temperatures and boils-off much like the water did. Instead of steam, we get smoke – a cornucopia of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and particulates. Smoke is a gaseous fuel. At 800F, the log has been reduced to its carbon skeleton, which we call charcoal. Charcoal is a solid fuel.
3. Combustion – our two fuels burn differently, each governed by The Fire Triangle. Charcoal burns as a red-hot ember (a surface oxidation). Smoke burns as an orange/yellow flame. Charcoal and smoke split the fire’s energy production roughly 50/50.

That simple, 3-step process has huge implications for barbecuers:

• The charcoal-only fire – charcoal is just wood that’s been taken through steps 1 and 2 at a factory. Having no volatiles, this fire is simple to control – just throttle the air supply. This allows the pit boss to load up a surplus of fuel, dial in the temperature with dampers, and get a long burn with minimal attention. The downside is that a charcoal-only fire is flavorless, making CO, CO2, and barbecue that tastes like pot roast.
• Smoke and creosote – the aromatics in smoke determine barbecue’s flavor. Cleanly-burned smoke makes good barbecue – that’s why pit bosses strive for clear or thin blue stack emissions. Unburned (chalky or yellowish) smoke is the source of bad barbecue – its volatiles will condense as creosote on your cold meat, making it black, bitter, and likely to cause gastronomic disturbances if consumed in quantity.
• Power control of a wood fire – choking a wood fire to reduce its power produces creosote. This is the grandest conceptual error in barbecue – pit makers design elaborate dampers and throttles, practitioners debate the merits of inlet vs. outlet throttling, novices get frustrated and give up. The only way to make clean smoke from a typical wood fire is to maintain good, hot geometry and control pit temperature by rationing fuel, rather than throttling combustion air.

*********

I believe Franklin's reasoning is about the same but I couldn't find anything on his websites that I could just copy/paste.

Canugghead

HeavyG said:

HOW WOOD BURNS

• ... The only way to make clean smoke from a typical wood fire is to maintain good, hot geometry and control pit temperature by rationing fuel, rather than throttling combustion air....

FWIW that's how pellet pooper works, guess the smoke is so clean that you don't taste it.

lousubcap

@HeavyG - thanks for the above post.  Good read.

Ybabpmuts

Love the term "gastronomic disturbances". Just this morning I was wishing that I could talk to my bum, because I could ask it why it did what it did to my underwear early this morning. Instead it's just this messy silence and I'm left wondering and guessing. I hope in the future, as men age, their bums grow ears.