Laurence Edwards tests wood pellets against pine shavings in two smokers. Pellets burn for over three hours on less than a third the fuel, produce cooler and less harsh smoke, and keep the smoker body cool. Pine shavings burn out in 15 to 30 minutes and make the smoker hotter.
Hi, I'm Laurence Edwards from Black Mountain Honey. Welcome to another episode of No Nonsense Beekeeping, another episode of our Bite-Sized Bees. Here we're going to find out which smoker fuel is best, wooden pellets or wooden shavings. So as part of our Bite-Sized Bees series, we're keeping these really short, around the 2-minute mark. All I'm going to do is I'm going to fire up 2 smokers, the Raunchboy and the Dadant, fill one up with wooden pellets, One up with wooden shavings. We'll let them burn, we'll see which one lasts the longest. Right, so that's both of the smokers lit. I'm gonna go and put them to the side, finish the rest of my videos, and I'll tell you which lasts longer, the wood shavings or the wood pellets. Right, so these smokers have been burning for about half an hour now. I've been going over there every now and again puffing them, just making sure that they're well lit and still burning, and the shavings have gone. Half an hour, I don't know when they stopped. But there's nothing left in there at all. The wooden pellets, less than 25% of the way through. So there's a clear winner here. I already knew that was going to be the case, but I just wanted to demonstrate to you I really don't think pine shavings is a very good smoker fuel. I much prefer a wooden pellet or something a bit tougher with a little bit more density because you get such a longer burn time out of it. So I'll leave this one burning. I'll see how long we can get out of it and I'll come back to the video in a couple of hours. Right, so we're 3 hours in for these wooden chips now and 7 videos in that time. Something crazy. I just keep on doing more videos 'cause there's more pellets to be burnt. And I reckon we've used about a third of the chips. Like, these are great. These are really, really top quality fuel. So I'm kind of converting this video into this is a really good smoker fuel. I'll definitely have to look at some other variations of this. Couple of people have tipped me off onto compressed hessian, grass nuts, and cat litter. And I know that this product here is very, very similar to cat litter. So I'll look at a few more of them. I'll do a few more tests. Just think it's quite easy to show you guys kind of what the results that I'm getting with these fuels saves you going through the pain of checking them all out yourself. But what I really like about this one in particular is that it's it's a nice cool smoke. Not harsh like the pine. It's consistent, getting loads of nice smoke out of it. Like, this smoker's been going for 3 hours, it's used less than a third of its fuel, and as you can see, it's smoking really, really well. I love my Rouchboy. Like, the more and more I use this smoker, the more and more I think I'm just not going to use my Daden anymore because I'm getting the smoke time that I need out of the little Rouchboy. Use the correct fuel. Cheers, Kevin Horner, for the tip-off. I really do like this smoker. And I like the fuel that I'm using in it as well. So I think we call it a day there with the video. I've just noticed how I'm holding this smoker as well, holding it around the cage. So the Rouchboy, you can do that. Touching underneath, perfectly cool. That smoker's been going 3 hours and look, I can hold it like that because the bottom is literally cold to the touch. You can put that on your poly hive, absolutely no problem. Quite a lot of creosote or like a tarry substance coming out of that though. Kind of ruined my nice new Silver smoker, but hey, it's a working tool. We can do with a little bit of creosote, and you will get that when you do block off smoker fuel like that. So yeah, I think we'll call it a day here for the video. I've got three hours out of the wooden pellets, and I got about twenty minutes out of the shavings. Probably only fifteen because I didn't get round to it in time. So if you're looking at those two products, you're thinking what's the best smoker fuel for me? I think these wooden pellets are going to be my go-to throughout the season. So I've spoken for way too long about a smoker again. You must be getting really bored of all these smoker videos. As always, please hit the subscribe button, please hit the bell so you're notified of every video, and I'll see you next time. Bye.
