Wood chips

[Ruedeleglise]

I have a friend who has a large apple orchard. Naturally he has to prune the trees and he chips these pieces. He has given me a large bucket full of these clippings which are a mixture of sizes, anything from 1 mm to 10 mm in size plus longer bits. They are perfectly dry. He hand clips and cuts and assure me there is no contamination from his small chipper. As you would expect it appears that there is plenty of bark mixed in with the chips. Do you think this would be suitable for hot / cold smoking?

 

[Smokin Monkey]

I would go ahead and use them, as long as they have dried.

[Ruedeleglise]

Thanks. Will do. Yes they are dry.

[Smokin Monkey]

I use branches from Apple Tree around 50mm diameter with bark, no problem as long as you know they have not had pesticides sprayed on them.

[Ruedeleglise]

Will get confirmation of no pesticides.

[Wade]

If you are using the wood for smoking (rather than eating) I would not worry too much about any residual amounts of pesticides that may be present. Most pesticides are complex organic molecules and these tend not to be very heat stable. Many will be broken down at temperatures between 100-200 C and most will be destroyed at 300-600 C the temperatures where the wood will start to combust. The word "pesticide" can often lead to very negative/irrational reactions - in a similar way to the use of galvanised components. 

[Justin]

Yes. I agree. After all farmers spray pesticides on wheat and barley......i do not worry. Why would pesticides sprayed on Apple trees be a problem? I mean they are apples right?

[Dick Bee]

I keep bees in a commercial orchard. When they spray they let me know and I shut the hives up the night before, and let the bees out again when the spray is dry. No problems so far ( fingers crossed!). I wouldn't worry about residues on bark as Wade says, we eat the apples after all!