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7 replies

Is old wood the problem?

FM Former Member
I have owned my Smokette for about 4 years and I am generally happy with the results. Lately, the meat has had a peculiar taste and doesn't really smell like hickory or apple. I read somewhere that old wood can give the food a funny taste.



I still have a bunch of hickory and apple I bought from Cookshack 4 years ago. It has been stored in sealed plastic bags inside a large plastic tub. Yesterday, I bought a bag of Weber hickory chunks and tried that. It seems to be much better. I may have answered my own question, but I hate to throw away 10 pounds of wood.



Any comments? Thanks, Dennis
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FM Former Member
Dennis,

So, let's see you're memeber 117 and you've had a CS for 4 years and only have a couple of posts...don't be a stranger, jump in any time.

I've not had that problem with old wood, unless it was rotting or something like that, but if you tried something different, and it changed...well you did answer your own question. Wink

And when is the last time you cleaned your smoker? There could also be a build-up inside on the walls.
FM Former Member
Clean the smoker? Am I supposed to do that?

Actually, I scrape the crud off the walls once in a while and, of course, clean the grills after every use. I have never given it a deep cleaning down to bare metal. The smoker doesn't smell bad. There is a build up around the heating element on the back wall that's hard to get off.



My time on the internet is kind of limited these days. I'll try to check in more often. Wink
FM Former Member
Well, your doing right with the scraping, but if you look inside and it's got a lot of build-up, you might consider cleaning it.

You'll have to reseason it and start over, but if there's a build up of creosote, it could be the bad taste.

You don't ever have to do this, but sometimes it's just not very clean from scraping.

If you think it was bad wood, I wouldn't clean it. You can also spot clean just that area that's built up, just be sure to reason.

Smokin'
FM Former Member
I have been storing my wood chunks in big pastic tubs (5 or 10-gal pails) with screw-on tops... doing this for years. Go through a tub in a month or two, though, so it doesn't really sit for years. Not airtight, either, since I just screw the top on loosely. Haven't seen any ill effects. The wood starts off seasoned when I get it.

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