Brisket and wood of choice.

[noboundaries]

Obviously woods for brisket is a matter of personal choice.  I've done them with fruits woods (too light a flavor), mesquite (not my favorite but makes my wife go weak in the knees), and hickory (my hands down favorite but my wife's second choice).  I have not tried oak yet.  I switch back and forth between hickory and mesquite on any beef we smoke from briskets to chuckies to beef ribs, etc.    

 

[kenosando]

 
Obviously woods for brisket is a matter of personal choice.  I've done them with fruits woods (too light a flavor), mesquite (not my favorite but makes my wife go weak in the knees), and hickory (my hands down favorite but my wife's second choice).  I have not tried oak yet.  I switch back and forth between hickory and mesquite on any beef we smoke from briskets to chuckies to beef ribs, etc.    

I've never personally smoked a brisket myself (newbie here), but I have had briskets smoked a variety of ways, and mesquite is always a good choice for me, but .... I've always known it to not be straight mesquite wood. Usually a pecan or oak is mixed in, or you could even do hickory + mesquite, and you and your wife would be happy. More experienced smokers will probably testify to this, but mesquite burns too fast to be used on larger cuts of meats, so you might could combine mesquite with hickory, oak, or pecan (which burn slower) and slowly move away from mesquite into a pure hickory/oak/pecan. Just my logic, which hasn't been field tested.

 

[58limited]

 
I use Oak on everything, basically because that's what I have, but that's also what the classic barbecue places in Central Texas use.  Cherry wood sounds like it would be great, how did your herb chicken come out?

Aggie94, I've tried other woods and like them but I keep coming back to Oak as well - all those places in Central Texas convinced me of that. The few times I have the time to do a brisket I use local oak. Cherry and Apple wood is great on steaks and pork though, you should try them sometime. Gig'em!