Best Smelling Firewood – Top 9 Firewood That Smell Great!

To find the firewood that smells best and has an aroma that can entangle your thoughts for many days can be quite challenging!

No doubt, it can be a bit difficult to discover fine firewood that deserves your hard-earned money. If you are fond of doing campfires and barbecues or are preparing to have a picnic on a starry night, then you need to get your hands on some sweet-smelling wood to burn to make your experience even more special.

With regards to discovering the best smelling firewood can be based on many factors such as price, smell, durability, burning performance, and quality. You might have had a debate with someone about what’s the best-smelling firewood? And you would have come to know that everyone has a different preference.

Some will love to have wood that smells strong yet sweet while some would be okay with firewood with a mild fragrance or no aroma at all.

In this very article, we will discuss not only the best-smelling firewood but will also fill you up on the details of our top-picked finest smelling firewood. And you’ll be able to shrink down the long list and wide variety of firewood available into just the fine-smelling ones.

Is Wood Smoke Harmful?

Yes, wood smoke is quite harmful as it contains several toxic, harmful air pollutants including benzene, acrolein, and methane. These chemicals can cause various serious issues such as lung diseases, heart stroke, and inflammation.

Our Top Picks for Best Smelling Firewood!

Different Woods have different scents and people are always attracted to a specific fragrance. Few might be enamored with classic wood smells, some with fruity wood smells, and others might like to have nutty wood smells.

The following mentioned are our top picks of best-smelling firewood which will help you to find the particular kind of wood fragrance that is more pleasant for you. These woods are:

1. Alder Wood
2. Apple Wood
3. Birch Wood
4. Cedar Wood
5. Cherry Wood
6. Hickory Wood
7. Mesquite Wood
8. Oak Wood
9. Pine Wood

1. Alder Wood

Alder wood can be used for a variety of purposes like firewood as well as medicine and furniture. Among different alder wood types, the black alder is best known for being used in campfires and cookouts as it is a quick lighting wood with a lovely crispy dark brown bark and lovely orange tone to the wood.

This is extremely popular in Scandinavia as a hardwood. It is ideal for wood burners as it dries extremely well so you never have any issues with its lighting. The scent which alder wood gives out when it is burned is similar to oak wood.

2. Apple Wood

In appearance, the apple wood looks pretty dry and it’s also kind of gnarly. The apple wood burns hotter than pine wood. It is a hardwood that burns slowly. As it is a fruit tree, it smells really like the burned wood of an apple tree. It omits the aromatic sweet and mild fragrance.

Furthermore, it got a little bit of fruity smell that’s one of the reasons people also use it for cooking, smoking, and grilling meat. Apple firewood is rated at 27 million BTUs per cord in heat output which is pretty high on the spectrum but not as high as the hickory. If you’re burning it in a wood stove it creates really good coals.

3. Birch Wood

Birch firewood is prized for its bright burning and easy lighting firewood that burns without much effort. The birch wood has elegant bark and great fragrance. The Scandinavians are so obsessed with the birch hardwood that they more or less, refuse to burn anything else in their fires.

Birchwood is also known for its fierce blaze and is perfect for modern fireplaces. There are different kinds of birch woods including white birch which isn’t that much dense, and black birch, which is much denser, and as good as ironwood with 26.8 million BTUs per cord.

Then there’s yellow birch with 21.8 million BTUs per cord and paper birch which has 20.2 million BTUs per cord. It is best for fires and grilling.

4. Cedar Wood

Cedar wood is aromatic and has a very strong and distinctive smell. The exact smell or intensity of it varies by the cedar species but they all give a really good fragrance. It is quite soft but still harder than your average pine wood and is light in weight.

The eastern red cedar is the most well-known firewood that producing about 18. 9 million BTUs of heat output per cord. If you want to choose a block of firewood with a nice smell, then red cedar is the best option for you. So, with this in mind, it’s great for outdoor campfires.

5. Cherry Wood

If you want a nice outdoor campfire, then cherry firewood is really hard to beat. The crowning jewel of cherry firewood is its magnificent scent which this firewood produces when it’s burned. As it is a fruit wood, that’s why it is also used for smoking heat.

If you indent to use this for wood heating or wood stove, it can prove to be one of the great options. Furthermore, it has a heat output of about 20 million BTUs per cord of firewood. This puts cherry wood in a similar range to silver maple wood and sycamore.

Though cherry wood doesn’t have a high heat output as hickory or oak it actually has really good coaling properties.

6. Hickory Wood

Hickory wood is absolutely one of the best types of firewood that you can burn, specifically for its exceptionally good and distinctive smoky smell. Its fragrance is so outstanding that the condensed hickory is used for making smoke flavorings and liquid smoke.

It is dense firewood that burns longer and hotter than just any other type of wood. The great fragrance and crackle can remind you of your childhood and will create a great environment. Another great quality of hickory is that it produces excellent coals and doesn’t give out too much smoke.

7. Mesquite Wood

You will love to use mesquite wood for certain purposes like barbecuing and grilling steaks because mesquite provides a strong distinct smell and tons of flavors. Actually, more flavors per chunk than any other on the list.

This may be a little bit on the fringe of the classic category, but we think you can probably put mesquite wood in the classical smoke smell firewood category if you are someday who would like to smoke meat. For direct cooking and over coals, mesquite wood is unmatched for its ability to impart flavors in a very short period.

8. Oak Wood

Oak is equally famous for its classical smoke scent just as hickory, but its fragrance is quite mild and earthy than that of hickory. Oak wood is best when it comes to using a wood stove to heat a house.

The heat output for oak is generally around 25 to 30 BTUs per cord, not by a lot but hickory has a little bit of edge over oak regarding heat output. Another best characteristic of oak is that when it is burned it doesn’t produce that much smoke or sparks and gives out good coals that are going to burn throughout the night.

9. Pine Wood

Pine is among the most famous firewood smells and most people have pine air fresheners in their cars because it smells amazing. Pine wood burns really quickly and you don’t have to tend to it like hickory or oak.

Pine is known as a soft wood it’s not that much dense, but it is excellent for outdoor campfires. The reason for this is that it doesn’t burn for too long but it produces really good coals. Moreover, the eastern white pine is excellent for getting a fire on leftover coals in the morning. The pine ignites fast, burns fast, and gets the stove back up to temperature really fast as well.

Best Smelling Firewood – FAQs

Conclusion

So, the question arises what is the best-smelling firewood to burn? Well, the answer is going to vary from person to person with their personal preferences, but one thing we assure is that all these firewood that we’ve listed above are exceptionally best.

They produce great scents and burn nicely. Hence, depending upon your preferences and the specific characteristics of firewood, you can get your hands on any of these and enjoy your campfires, barbecuing, and outdoor grilling without any trouble!