Wood & Smoke Picker
Pick what you are cooking, what you are cooking on, and how much smoke you like. It ranks the woods, suggests a blend, tells you what to skip and sizes the wood for your cooker.
Arrives November 2026, free for bundle holders
Why it exists
Wood is the one ingredient that can ruin a cook you did everything else right on. Too much mesquite on a pork butt and twelve hours of work tastes like an ashtray. This ranks the woods for what is actually on your pit and tells you how much of it to use.
What it does
Twelve woods, ranked for the meat
Not a chart of flavours. An order, with the top pick first and the reason underneath.
Sized for your cooker
Chunks on a kettle, splits on an offset, a hopper on a pellet grill. The amount is different on each and so is the advice.
Blends worth trying
The pairings that work, like hickory with a little apple, and roughly what ratio to run them at.
What to keep off the fire
Softwoods, anything painted or treated, and the green wood that makes white smoke and bitter bark. This list matters more than the good list.
Three steps, start to finish
Pick the meat, the cooker and how bold you want the smoke.
Set the cook length so the amount scales.
Read the top pick and the amount. Put the rest of the wood back in the rack.
Who it is for
New offset owners, anyone who has just been given a bag of wood chunks and does not know what to do with them, and every cook who has produced one genuinely over-smoked brisket and does not want another.
What it will not do
Wood is personal and regional. Texas runs post oak on everything and is not wrong. Treat the ranking as a strong starting point, not a rule, and trust your own table over a list.
Questions
Do I need to soak wood chunks?
No. Soaked wood steams before it smokes, and steam is not flavour. Dry, seasoned wood on a clean fire is the whole trick.
How much smoke is too much?
When you can taste smoke before you taste meat. Smoke is seasoning. The tool sizes the wood to the cooker for exactly this reason.
Does it cover pellets?
Yes. Pellet blends get the same ranking, with the caveat that a pellet grill puts out less smoke than a stick burner and the amount is set by the hopper, not by you.
Wood & Smoke Picker arrives November 2026
The store is not open yet. Tools will sell one at a time, or as a bundle that keeps feeding you the rest as they land. One payment either way, and up to three devices.
The tools open shortly. Join the newsletter and you will hear the day they do. Already have a code? Open your tools. Have a claim code? Claim your tools.
Works alongside
These three come up most often on the same cook.
Pit Troubleshooter
Something is going sideways at the pit. Tap the symptom and get the likely causes in order, the fix for right now, and what to change next time.
See what it does ›Fuel Calculator
Tell it your cooker, your pit temperature and how long the cook runs. It tells you how much fuel to have on the patio before you light anything.
See what it does ›Rub Calculator
Pick a rub, say how much meat you have, and it hands you the recipe in tablespoons and teaspoons. Make just enough for tonight or fill a jar for the season.
See what it does ›