At most, you should be adding 5 wood chips every 45 – 60 minutes.
Don’t believe me?
Click here to Jump to my Testing
Don’t Be Like Younger Dylan!
When I was 13, the first smoker I ever bought myself was an Electric Smoker.
The first thing I ever smoked was beef jerky and I completely ruined it; The jerky consistency itself was fine but it tasted like bitter creosote flavored teriyaki.
I choked it down and learned my lesson.
The lesson being – you don’t need to add tons of wood chips and you don’t need to add them often.
What Masterbuilt Says About Adding More Wood Chips
Masterbuilt’s instruction manual states:
“Additional chips should not be added until any previously added chips have ceased generating smoke.”
Masterbuilt
However, this doesn’t tell you:
- Exactly how long that is
- How many to add
I can tell you from personal experience that it takes roughly 45 – 60 minutes for 5 wood chips to ash out.
Seeing is believing so, read on.
Testing How Long Wood Chips Last in an Electric Smoker
Just to have some independent variables:
- I’ll be using my Masterbuilt 40 inch electric smoker
- I’ll be using 5 hickory wood chips (all 4 tests were weighed to be 10 grams)
- My smoker’s temperature will be set to 250F
In order to minimize temperature swings I’ll be running 4 tests independently and taking pictures at 4 different timed intervals.
For example:
- Test 1 ends at 15 minutes.
- A photo is taken and observations are written down.
- Wood chip tray is then dumped and the door is closed.
- Temperature is allowed to come back up to 250F and 5 more wood chips are added.
- This process is then repeated at 30, 45, and 60 minute intervals.
Wood Chips at 15 Minutes
Visible smoke via the exhaust damper.
Wood chips have visible embers that have started to carbonize/ash, and are still smoking.
Wood Chips at 30 Minutes
Visible thin blue smoke via the exhaust damper.
Some visible embers on wood chips; Visibly more ashed over than 15 minutes.
Wood Chips at 45 Minutes
Thin blue smoke via exhaust damper.
Less visible embers on wood chips. Visibly more ashed than 30 minutes.
Wood Chips at 60 Minutes
No smoke via the exhaust damper.
Wood chips entirely ashed over. There is almost no smoke inside the smoke chamber.
Can You Add More Wood Chips for a Longer Run Time?
Seems intuitive right?
But what can and will happen is you’ll add too much white smoke; Pushing too much white smoke results in acrid/bitter flavors.
The above also results in the build up of a lot of combustion byproducts. This could lead to a “blowback” or backdraft where-in oxygen enters the system and causes a sudden exfiltration of smoke via the exhaust.
Here’s an example with Firefighters and why you don’t open doors and windows during a fire:
This same thing can happen in an electric smoker.
This is another reason brands like Masterbuilt advise against wood pellets in their electric smokers.
8 comments
Michael Reed
Dude you are awesome. I have been smoking for nearly 20 years and this is something I tell all “new” smokers. You don’t want the white plumes of smoke. Just low and slow. Thank you for emphasizing with pictures. I tend to empty my tray every other load.
Dylan Clay
Appreciate the compliments Michael! I try to do my best to explain so that all experience levels can benefit – whether they’re a 20 year vet or someone new to BBQ; So I’m happy to hear that my efforts don’t go unnoticed.
Andy
Hi, Dylan. I completely understand and agree with you on the amount of chips to add, and when you add them. My question is a little different.
Do you add chips every hour for the duration of the cook? Or is there something like a saturation point, where you’re not getting any additional benefit from continuing to add chips, and you should just let the electrical heat element do its thing without adding any more smoke?
Thanks in advance!
Dylan Clay
Hey Andy, good question.
So it really depends on the cut of meat you’re working with. To illustrate, we can look at brisket and pork ribs.
Just some factoids: Brisket is a huge cut of meat weighing anywhere from 8-20 lbs where-as pork ribs are around 2-5+ lbs. Meat or muscle tissue is primarily comprised of water.
Brisket can and will take on more smoke than pork ribs simply due to the relative water content of the muscle. This fact is so true that brisket goes through a stall/plataeu period where-in it’s pushing out tons of moisture and sweating (evaporative cooling). Truth be told, ribs won’t stall due to evaporative cooling but wrapping can speed up the cook time without much of a difference in output (in my opinion). This is especially true for electric smokers which typically have an ultra-tight seal.
Smoke particles are attracted to wet surfaces more-so than they are dry surfaces.
Meaning, if the surface of the meat is still “wet” it can and will take on smoke. Just to give some overarching times for you to compare it to, I looked at my recipes and my provided time stamps using my Weber Kettle. A 10 lb brisket I smoked for 6 hours and then foil boated for the remainder of the cook in my electric smoker. Baby back ribs I smoked for 3 hours and 30 minutes before wrapping in foil. Both were wrapped and/or boated at around 175-180F internal (aka the tail end of any sort of stall they may be experiencing).
The short of it: If the surface of the meat is still wet, you can continue to add wood chips. If the meat is dry to the touch and you’re happy with the bark formation, wrap the meat or don’t, and simply allow the electric joule heating element to continue to render collagen/connective tissue.
Hope that helps!
Devin Veasey
When you add more wood chips at the 45-60 minute range do you dump the old chips before adding or just put more chip in on top of the old ones? My manual recommended to not open the smoker unless necessary.
thanks.
Dylan Clay
Hey Devin,
So the build up of ash is minimal if using the number of wood chips I used. The ash collection system on my Masterbuilt isn’t super deep and even on longer smokes like with Brisket, I’ve never had to dump the tray mid-cook.
-Dylan
Andy
Hey Dylan,
When I add more chips in my Masterbuilt smoker, I usually fill the tray all the way up and it seems the smoke just lasts about an hour. When I refill, I notice that it doesn’t produce smoke. Am I adding too much? I think your method of letting 10g of chips sounds pretty good.
Dylan Clay
Hey Andy,
So in my opinion, you shouldn’t be entirely filling the wood chip tray or the loader; When I first got started this almost always pushed too much white smoke (the smoke you don’t want) and can even lead to issues like blowbacks. From my tests in this article (and my experience) 5 wood chips produces enough thin blue smoke (the smoke you want) and lasts for 45-60 minutes on average.
When you’re refilling with wood chips, are you clearing the ash pan? It sounds like there could be a complete buildup of ash that’s preventing the combustion of subsequent wood chips.
To note: the 10 g measurement was simply because I wanted to have a few control variables to make this test worthwhile and repeatable. When I use my electric smoker, I don’t weigh out 10 g of wood chips every time I smoke. I simply grab 5-7 wood chips and put them into the loader and let them smolder for 45-60 minutes or until I don’t see anymore thin blue smoke.