Smoking Cheese: Soak the Chips?

[mjr522]

I'm trying the soldering iron in a can method of cold smoking.  Now that it's been going for a while, I'm wondering to myself--should I have soaked the wood chips in some water before putting them in the can?

[MrsKK]

I'm not experienced with smoking, but everything I've read says that the chips should be soaked, otherwise they will burn.

This is probably too late to be of help, sorry!

[mjr522]

The chips never caught on fire, they did smoke a lot.  The flavor is pretty strong, but I understand that I need to let them mellow a little bit before eating them.  I ended up smoking everything for about an hour.  A few of the pieces had significant color changes, but most had just the tiniest color change.  I've put them in bags and now they're hanging out in fridge.

I still might soak the chips next time to see if it makes any difference in the flaovr.  If the only purpose is to prevent them from catching fire, though, it's unneeded.