So the outcome of the BBQ bacon fest with the different woods, it seemed Hickory was really popular. The Mrs and I both agreed - it's got a cleaner smoke profile. One of the guys has decided to get a small smoker as a birthday present.
So with the same cured but uncooked/smoked bacon from Sainsbury's:
* Webber Apple chunks - has the normal almost malty fruit tasting smoke
* Neapolitan Cherry chunks - has the slightly heavier malty fruit taste smoke
* Webber Beech chips with some soaking - I did these a little longer, as a result they had a heavier smoke, not fruity but still has a tang in the smoke.
* US Oak (sealed food grade US oak for maturing wine) 1cm cubes soaked - has a smell of burning oak, with a mellow savoury smoke taste that's more subtle than hickory
* Webber Hickory chips with some soaking - has a clean and very present smoke taste, that doesn't have anything else messing with the taste of the meat.
I have small foil sealed bags of the oak I used for beer making. They're food grade so there's no problems. I'd imported these in about 2008 as the US Oak taste is mellower than the harsher French oak used in wine and so in beer the mellowness works better. It also presents an open mellow fire pit smoky taste.
It's interesting that there's a marked difference in the smoking between the sealed bags of the webber and the Neapolitan in a box. The boxed wood was dryer and seemed to loose some of the final impact with the food.
The idea of doing bacon is people can pick and try different woods, and complement the BBQ food when they're not so used to smoked foods.
