I echo this 100%. I used to like charcoal smokers until I started cooking on stickburners. Once I went back to charcoal smoking I definitely didn’t like it as much. I like smokers with lots of airflow and where there is a standing flame. That’s means you have reached burning bush which is the 3rd stage of wood combustion. When wood burns with plenty of oxygen you burn off all the nasties and aromatic polymers are formed. I call those aromatic polymers “wood perfume”. That’s why stickburners and pellet smokers smell great when burning and charcoal smokers have kind of a dirty bonfire smell when in use.
So I prefer stickburners and pellet smokers for flavor. My wife and family does too.
I sort of know what you mean about charcoal having a dirty bonfire smell when in use.
However I've found this to be particularly true with Kingsford and other briquettes, and less the case with well lit lump charcoal such as Royal Oak, and going a little heavier on the wood chunks in my WSMs, and having the wood chunks well burned down to almost coals.
That has given me the best smoke flavor for my personal taste, not that I don't enjoy the light smoke flavor from my Rec Tec too.
On a side note, some people find the smoke from out of smoke tubes filled with pellets, to be less desirable, however I have not.
It's fine to my personal tastes, even though smoke coming from smoldering pellets in a smoke tube tends to be a bit more thick and white than thin and blue, I find that even this white smoke coming from off of pellets in a smoke tube, is not as strong and bad tasting as white smoke coming from off of charcoal briquettes.
The first time I saw it, I’m thinking; “oh man, this is going to taste awful”.
But I’ve found that white smoke from out of my smoke tube with pellets, isn’t necessarily the ominous sign that white smoke coming from out of a charcoal grill is.
