have been told if I use oak for smoking meat to take the bark off of it that it is not good to use oak with bark. Can anyone fill me in on this matter and have you had any experience with using oak with or without bark.
thanks

You will probably get a 50/50 response. Some swear that tree bark gives a bitter taste while others say that the bark makes no difference in the flavor.

Personally, I never remove the bark from any of my smoking woods. Now, if it has moss or something that looks like scaley fungus I wire-brush it or remove the bark. The only time I have ever had a bitter smoke was the first time I used my SmokinTex, using too much wood. Everything has been fantastic since then - bark or no bark.

You'll have to be your own judge.

Good luck with your smoking adventures and "Welcome to the forum!"

I can't give a definitive answer either.. but here are a couple of thoughts.. There are a number of good/popular places around here that do smoke cooking. Some are huge above ground stone pits with thick metal grates on top. The temps are controlled similar to using a Weber kettle.. fire on one side and holding temps on the other. Others are commercial offsets. In both types they throw in seasoned oak logs with bark on. The smoke flavor is excellent.. and not bitter.

I've asked the same thing about using barked woods in the CS and received the 50/50 answers that Wheelz mentioned. My first cooks I used Alder with bark.. the next few cooks I removed it. Not sure I could detect a difference.. but, maybe my palate is not as sensitive as others??? I have not used barked woods in my smoker since. I guess my reasoning is that the ratio of wood to bark, beings we are only using 1-4 oz of wood, might be a bit high.

In the first examples they were using split logs. Had they been using branches where the bark to wood ratio was higher.. the product might not turn out as well.. Like I said.. I don't know the answer.. but, you have something more to think about.

My opinion, just leave the bark on, there's plenty more to learn about with the smoker and bark on/off isn't really an issue from where I can see.

The only time I'd consider removing bark might be from orchard/fruits woods,where pesticides may have be used recently.