Smoke on the Wind! - A Connoisseur's Guide

If you live in the country, you know your smoke. Smoke carries information. You pay attention.

A few minutes ago Dear Wife asked me -- are you burning something? Nope. But a puff of smoke came into the house when she let the hounds out. I could tell right away it was wood smoke from a deliberate campfire or a wood stove starting up. Nothing to worry about. A connoisseur's nose, on the stick.

There are other distinctive smokes:
- Grass fire
- Brush pile (clean)
- Burning weeds
- Farmer burning a moldy hay/straw bale
- Brush pile (bulldozed, with dirt)
- Wildfire, close (!!!)
- Wildfire, far far away
- Electrical, 120/240 AC
- Electrical, electronics
- Smoker, hardwood pellets

Any "delicate notes of this and that" your country nose might add to the connoisseur smoke list?

In addition to this list, I can reliably ID paper, cardboard, and plastic fires. Also pretty good at detecting hydrocarbon accelerants, and differentiating between petrol, diesel, and motor oil. Unfortunately for me, all of these seem to go into my neighbour's brazier from time to time, and another house nearby has a penchant for stuffing their wood fire full of paper and plastic (never mind the fact that recycling pickup here is free).

Then there are the different types of wood: Pine has an obvious and distinct aroma. So do the cedars and junipers, and fir and spruce to a lesser extent. Lots of hardwood smokes have unique smells and I can pick out willow, poplar (plus cottonwood and aspen), oak, and fruit woods easily. Then there's mesquite...nothing quite like it (although Tasmanian blackwood has some similarity if it's good and dry).

I love the smell of hardwood smoke...I can tell Shagbark Hickory from maple from oak from cherry-very distinctive.
I get a warm, homey feeling when I smell it out on my dog walks, more so than when I have a fire in the home.

Around here, our flavors predominantly run:

-Leaves
-Trash burning
-Brush pile burning (with or without accelerant)
-Fireworks
-Oh yuck, somebody's burning Black Locust in their stove
-Oh yuck, somebody's burning pallets or pressure treated lumber in their outdoor wood furnace, maybe it's a house fire? (often confused with Black Locust if only a light sampling on the breeze)
-Someone's grilling/ someone's grilling and not paying attention
-Wildfire (Appalachian Forest)
-California/ Canadian Wildfire, where the smell is coming from everywhere at once and you can't see it, save for a vague haze on the horizon and vibrant sunsets; smells like all of the above mixed together

Adding to the list:
- A righteous biochar burn that was supposedly smothered, but some oxygen got in somehow -- it smells like a closed in forest fire, in miniature (from those odd bits that weren't fully charred, I think) -- when noticed, walking by, it is normally punctuated by a highly expressive load of cuss and a flurry of shovel action

Since I live in the boondocks, I hate seeing or smelling smoke.

Trash or wood smoke has a very different smell to a house fire....

here in the urban setting we have a lot of this....

-the guy expressing his Inner Little Boy who loves setting things on fire and even collects burnables to burn in his yard, regularly. Wife may not let him in the house at all.
- the trash burner, who instead of calling the town to pick up his demolition waste or old mattress decides to light it up instead (possibly the same guy as #1)
and our local champion....
-the Gar-B-Q, a slow-roasted rack of beef ribs cooked over a diverse assortment of wooden packing crates, salvaged furniture scraps, and wood that might have been used as cement molds in the new house they're building around the corner. Usually started with greasy pizza boxes and hand sanitizer left over from the pandemic. Since it takes about 6 hours to roast, and at least 12 beers are consumed prior to that, nobody complains about the smell or health hazards.
(I can taste whatever is used to cook the barbecue I eat, especially accelerants to start the fire, and I don't know how folks can eat this meat literally cooked with garbage. But charcoal is expensive......)

This is, however, balanced out by the best smell in the world a few times a week-- my neighbor down the way who roasts her coffee old-school, in the ball roaster (see pic).

S Tonin wrote:
-Someone's grilling/ someone's grilling and not paying attention

Oh, this one is a classic!

Streetside garbage burning cans. Strong plastic odor wafting up to my 3rd floor apartment when I lived overseas. Similar at beachside, but it was in giant pits dug into the beach sand.

I was a volunteer firefighter for many years and I was surprised how my nose could be utilized like a tool.

To add to the list
- Structure fires smell similar to refuse fires.
- Vehicle/Tractor fires
- Burnt popcorn smoke smells really distinct to me.
- Burnt dust smoke from turning on heating equipment for the first time in the heating season
- Black powder smoke is really distinct, we have a lot of ceremonial cannon firing in my area.

Phil Stevens wrote:

S Tonin wrote:
-Someone's grilling/ someone's grilling and not paying attention

Oh, this one is a classic!

Haha, agreed! The proof  of "grilling and not paying attention" is when the pizza delivery guy pulls up 30 minutes later.