jack daniels wood chips help

[calimeats]

hi everyone. I am a rookie here and to smoking. I purchased the MES40 last week on amazon. got it and set it up. today I smoked my first meal. was a ton of stuff. lots of ribs, a tri tip and a roast. also some mac n cheese. not bad for my first smoke session.

however I did not succeed with taste. the rub recipe I used was blah...

I did use the JD whiskey wood chips but I noticed a issue. reading a lot of reviews on amazon and other places, I notice people say you constantly have to fill the smoker with chips every 30 minutes or so. I noticed this issue when I did the first smoke session to setup the smoker with no food. I used the standard hickory smoke chips to setup the smoker yesterday, and I had to keep putting in the chips every half hour. they were turning to ash. but today, I was using the JD chips, and I was reloading the chip area every 30 minutes like I was doing with the hickory chips. well I started to notice that I wasn't really smoking at all with the chip smell like the hickory was. then I noticed about 2.5hours in of cooking and loading chips in that it was getting harder to pull the chip tray out and spin it to reload the chips. then I saw that there was actually a loaded amount of chips. after seeing this I realized that the chips weren't smoking at all. temperature was up, but the chips weren't smoking and they weren't turning to ash like the hickory chips did.

so I opened the smoker and pulled the tray out for the chips and dumped them, put another load in and 30 minutes later I still saw the chips in there but black, not ashed, but still solid. I put more chips in and still no real smoke.

so I dumped that load and threw in the hickory chips and the machine started smoking away (which is what I was expecting)

so my question is are the JD chips right for the MES40 machine and if so do I expect to refill them every 30 minutes or hour or is 1 load for a 4 hours session enough?

and if you might happen to have a MES40 or 30 inch machine and use the JD chips, do you have issues with smoke or flavoring?

thank you

 

[forluvofsmoke]

I'm not sure what would cause the JD chips not to smoke while others will, but if no solution comes up, just stop using them. A mix of hickory & JD might be worth a try...the oak barrel chips apparently need more heat to get them going, and a mix with other chips might help create that condition. Considering that whiskey barrels are charred inside after construction (before filling with whiskey to age it), and this may be the reason for needing more heat to create smoke. You may need to run the MES at a bit higher temp setting to get the JD chips to smoke.

As for dry rubs, PM me with your recipe (or post it here) and we'll look it over.

Eric

 

[whatamess]

I have a 30" MES, and I use the JD chips occasionally for short smokes. I've never had that happen they seem to smolder just fine for me. When I first start with them, I will put only maybe 8-10 small chips in, let them go for 20 minutes then the next load L'll put a few more in as there is some hot embers in there by that time. I've have never used more than maybe half a tray though. Maybe try not filling it too much too fast?