by Swede » Tue Sep 13, 2011 8:36 am
Too thin is not desireable, you want your oak to be thick enough that you get a good cross section of charred to white through the stick. Treating your wood this way, charring the outer while leaving the inner relatively untouched gives the widest flavor profile. Chips or planed shavings would be all char, or all toast, etc, their not thick enough to give a good balance in my opinion.
But hey, wine guys use toasted chips, and it works, but then again, thats wine....
I'd take a hatchet and split up some sticks into 10mm x10mm square chunks, long enough to fit your jar easily, and char these on the BBQ, quench to rinse off ash and stop it from burning, and your golden. These are also known elsewhere as "pinto sticks" after pintoshine, the first guy to post this awesome method.
HTH
Swede