First cheese...have a few questions..

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kingt36

Meat Mopper
Original poster
Jun 21, 2012
180
12
Metro Atlanta
It's pretty cool outside down here in Atlanta, but I was determined to smoke something. I opened up the fridge and saw a block of colby jack and a block of sharp cheddar cheese and decided to give my first cheese a whirl.

I put about a row and a quarter of cherry pellets in the AMNPS and the cheese has been smoking fairly steady for about an hour. I'm thinking I will let it smoke for at least three hours. My question is, does cheese need to mellow after smoking, and if so, how long?


 
Smoke then rest over night . wipe w/ paper towel. Vac seal and let age at least 2 weeks

 I never open cheese at less than 30 days. have some that is 2 years aged that is fanastic
 
 
Smoke then rest over night . wipe w/ paper towel. Vac seal and let age at least 2 weeks

 I never open cheese at less than 30 days. have some that is 2 years aged that is fanastic
yeahthat.gif
 
There is no step more important than resting the cheese between smoking and eating. Two weeks is possible, two months is awesome.
 
What kind of temperatures do you have outside down there? Once it hit 55 here, my internal smoker temp would hit 90 and possibly more. Since I have cooled and packed 1 grilled cheese already in April, I'm hoping not to get to that point again. During the 55-60 degree days, night would be around 40 so, I smoked the cheeses usually after 7pm
 
 
Smoke then rest over night . wipe w/ paper towel. Vac seal and let age at least 2 weeks

 I never open cheese at less than 30 days. have some that is 2 years aged that is fanastic
There is no step more important than resting the cheese between smoking and eating. Two weeks is possible, two months is awesome.
yeahthat.gif
 
I have some Black diamond 3 yo and 4 yo cheddar that i smoked almost 2 years ago. FANTASTIC!
 
you folks are killing me. Smoke cheese & have to wait weeks to enjoy....... several weeks.... or even longer. I'm a cheese freak  but looking forward to getting my A-maze-n pellet smoker in & have fun learning the art of "cold smoking" .  do I need to do mailbox mod. on my MES 30 so I won't get temp rise for the cheese?  Thanks Larryacguy
 
Doing a mailbox mod will help keep any generated heat out of your smoker.  I think it really depends on the estimated ambient temp during the time you are smoking.   I wait until it's pretty cool and then smoke away with the AMNPS at the bottom of my smoker.  For me the AMNPS raises the inside of the smoker about 10 degrees.   So if it's 60* outside, the inside of the smoker will be about 70*, which I find as being an OK temp to do cheese at.
 
Mailbox is a real good add on, I have a prime rib in now with the mail box attached, nice TBS can't go wrong.

Richie
 
Nice use of the box. It seems that you hardly have any temperature increase inside the smoker. I need to try this. What is inside the mailbox burning? Do you use a grate with chips or a pellet tray or...might you just build any remote firebox and pipe the exhaust thru another container with the food in it?

Since this is adding smoke flavor by exposure to the smoke and not the heat..do you have any condensation problems or creosote?
 
Just used my mailbox yesterday to cold smoke some peppers. I have it rigged so I can hook it up to any of my smokers.

dirt sailor,

I had something similar when in Medford the only addition was I had a fan I put in the middle of the duct work that would help pull the smoke and then push it. it was a very low speed fan and I found it from my local appliance repair group and it was the fan out of a convection oven. the fan has two wires so depending on which way you connect it the fan can pull or push, worked really well......just my two cents,

Tom
 
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