I am new to smoking and haven't found a reliable private party to buy wood from yet. Retail I pay about $20 for a 2/3 cu ft. bag of chunks. This is from a local BBQ store. Are there online vendors you like to use? And am I paying too much?
I am new to smoking and haven't found a reliable private party to buy wood from yet. Retail I pay about $20 for a 2/3 cu ft. bag of chunks. This is from a local BBQ store. Are there online vendors you like to use? And am I paying too much?
If you are using the wood for flavor you can greatly reduce you cost by getting amazing pellet tray and a 20lb bag of pellets. One fill of the tray takes about 1/2lb of pellets and smokes for around 12 hours. A bag of Camp Chef Applewood pellets is $12.99. So with a bag of pellets and a pellet tray you can get around 450 hours of smoke or $0.36 per hour of smoke.
http://www.chiggercreek.com/index.php
Not sure how this fits for you or cost compares . These guys are Missouri based I use the chunks and chips . I just use for flavor , not the heat source . I buy them local , 5 bucks for the bag of chips , $8 for the chunks .
If interested I bet you can find them local to you also .
It’s a tad high but not ridiculous. I assume you are using as flavor wood in a charcoal or electric or gas smoker. That amount lasts me quite a while, say 10 or more smokes (just a guess as I haven’t counted how many smokes I get out of a bag of chunks).
If you are using a stick burner you will go bankrupt using bags of chunks.
One thing to consider is whether or not those bags of wood you're using are kiln dried or not. Wood dried in a kiln loses a lot of the compounds we seek to flavor meat.
Currently, I can't even find a source of hardwood in my area.
When I decided that Bradley had priced their Pucks out of my realm of reasonable, and that having to order them was my only way to get them, I decided to find a better way.
Poking around the Internet brought me here, and I became a Pellet convert.
Everywhere around me there are numerous brands and types of pellets available.
Eventually that brought me to an AMNPS. And I know of no better way to get smokey goodness as inexpensively, or with such readily available wood types.
Try Charcoal, and add flavor with AMNPS or an AMNTS. Done, and Done!
Well you're a KC resident. I purchased from Woodyard BBQ once, and their markup is pretty high if that's where you're getting it. I live relatively close to Woodyard's supplier CNC Wood Sales, and I get a big bag(50lbs?) of oak for I think $20. It's been a bit since I had to buy wood, I don't go through as much with my GF smoker. You might give Carrol a call/email and you may be able to work it out if you can buy some directly from them when they are doing a delivery up there.
That's pretty common on the outskirts of St. Louis if the tree is down . Never hurts to ask .last time I was in MO, I cut a whole cherry tree and split it for free.
I'm lucky I guess that I have lived in the country my whole life and have plenty of wooded areas. I have always cut, spit and seasoned my on. Wild Cherry, Hickory, Pecan and Oak. I don't have Pecan growing on my property but there is a Pecan orchard about 15 miles away and I check with them from time and cut big limbs that break off during high winds and such. No charge.I am new to smoking and haven't found a reliable private party to buy wood from yet. Retail I pay about $20 for a 2/3 cu ft. bag of chunks. This is from a local BBQ store. Are there online vendors you like to use? And am I paying too much?
DustyJoe,
What kinda smoker are you using? You refer to bags of chunks in you OP then start talking about splits as the thread progresses.
When you say a bag of chunks I’m thinking about a charcoal smoker like a WSM or similar and when you talk about using splits I am thinking offset stick burner.
I have an offset. I typically use splits but for some reason the BBQ store I buy wood from did not have splits listed on their website, only chunks so I used that as an example to get feedback on prices. I couldn't remember what I paid there for the splits.