# Green apple wood?



## wholesmoker (Dec 7, 2006)

I'm going to be smoking commercially as some of you may know. My regional coordinator has decided that we will be using green apple wood for all our meat (no fish). He got this idea from some guy who runs a chain of bbq spots named Memphis BBQ, or something. I've never read anything about green apple wood. The reasoning is that we don't have to take the time to soak it to speed up our production time. Anyone use or hear anything about using green wood? I have suspicions about it being bitter or possibly even slightly toxic...


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## pyre (Dec 7, 2006)

I have always read that you should use only well seasoned wood, and only soak wood chips.

I've never used green wood, but I would think the smoke would be too thick and bitter.


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## jrollins (Dec 8, 2006)

I just smoked some pork chops with green apple wood. It was nasty but maybe i did something wrong. I got a lot of smoke from the green wood but it was white smoke. Look at smoking with green or dryed wood under my post. GOOD LUCK!!!


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## up in smoke (Dec 8, 2006)

Well WholeSmoker, 
      From what Iâ€[emoji]8482[/emoji]ve been led to believe when you burn green wood, it puts off a lot more creosote than seasoned wood and green wood also has a lot more water to evaporate and drip creosote onto your food when it condenses on the roof of your smokerâ€¦it isnâ€[emoji]8482[/emoji]t pretty, makes your food look nasty and it tastes like crap. Nuff said? :roll:


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## wholesmoker (Dec 8, 2006)

Got it. I did some more research online too. Looks like there are several restaurants that use green wood and I've read both sides of the debate over whether it adds bitterness or sweetness. The only thing that it seems both sides agree on is that it causes creosote. To me it then just makes sense that it also causes bitterness because creosote tastes nasty and looks nasty. I think I'll have to try this debate out with the coordinator who is setting this up. If worst comes to worst I might have to use the green apple junk for the first month or so until I can take the project completely out of his hands and he moves on to the next big new store opening in Chicago.  :(


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