Smokinlicious® Smoking Wood Tips

We use a moisture reader to maintain proper wood chip wetness of our products.

Wood Chip Wetness chart for smoking and grilling with Wood! Share on X

Wood Chip Wetness Reference Data

If you’ve been following the Smokinlicious® Culinary Wood Products website for a while, then you’re very aware of how serious we take wood. It is extremely important to us to educate you on hardwood and how it can be used for cooking. We know there are choices out there when it comes to purchasing wood. That’s why we love to make comparisons between popular products on the market.

Recently, we investigated the moisture levels of two popular name-brand products that are available across the USA. Using a commercial-grade moisture reader (Delmhorst Instrument Co., RDM-3 #12084), we recorded the moisture level of both name-brand smoking wood chips. One was Hickory, the other Mesquite – two very popular wood species for smoking.

Why should you care about the moisture level of the wood?

Moisture is what causes wood to smolder rather than burn up. It’s the difference between firewood and cooking wood. If you want to burn a fire for heat output only, then you need dry wood. If you want to cook flavorful foods by fire, the wood needs some measurable moisture, preferably over 15%, in order to flavor the food with the essence of the wood.

The Results Are In!

The Hickory wood chips registered 7% moisture and the Mesquite 7.3%! Although SmokinLicious® is not a manufacturer of Mesquite products (we only manufacturer products native to our area), we are able to provide you with comparable numbers for our seven hardwood species. On average, the following are the moisture levels for our woods:

Alder = 19.8%

Ash = 20.2%

Hickory = 25.6%

Red Oak = 26.2%

Sugar Maple = 24.4%

White Oak = 21.9%

Wild Cherry = 23.8%

Be An Educated Shopper

It is important to remember that when shopping for smoking wood chips and chunks, products that are packaged in plastic bags generally must have an average moisture level of less than 8% to remain stable enough to prevent mold growth and spoilage. Unfortunately, this means this type of product would compromise your cooking flavor, as once the molecules of the wood are deprived of air circulation and moisture, they permanently die and cannot be re-hydrated. That means, don’t waste your time trying soak the wood. It will do nothing but produce a musty smell when burning.

SmokinLicious Culinary Wood Products only sells our products fresh! You’ll never see our woods sealed in plastic and now you know why!

More Related reading on smoker wood chip wetness

Dr. Smoke- we provide the wood chip moisture readings on all our packages as guidance for the chef to gauge the amount of smoke output to their tasting needs.