Finished pressing the next batch and now they're air drying.
Here's the recipe:
5 parts wood chips
1 part water
1 part potato starch
Mix thoroughly, creating a moist but not watery solution.
The resulting mash should easily crumble in your hands:
I press the bisquettes using:
- a 4" long, 2" diameter PVC pipe
- three 2" diameter, circle cut pieces of 1" thick oak board
- a vice
First, with the PVC pipe, drop a 2" circle cut board inside:
Next, fill with the wood mash. This is pretty much eye-balled, but it might be about 1/3 cup.
I know there is enough mash if the next circle cut board fits almost flush with the end of the PVC pipe:
Place the next 2" circle cut board on top:
Place in the vice press and squeeze.
The vice will be just about flush with the PVC pipe.
Its okay if it isn't perfect or if the pipe is slightly cattywampus... it will still feed through the Bradley smoker.
Remove the pipe from the vice and push the 2" circle cut board through.
The bisquette will be slightly stuck to one of the 2" circle boards.
I've found the best way to remove it is to slightly twist the bisquette, like opening a soda bottle.
I smooth the edges off slightly before placing on the drying rack.
If not, they'll naturally fall off since they fit around the sides of the compression and aren't really tight on.
Here are 24 freshly made bisquettes.
I started off slow this time since I had to remember my technique and I was trying to be a bit more scientific about the proper ratios for mixing the mash.
For comparison, an official Bradley smoker bisquette on the far left. Notice how perfectly round and smooth it is.
Mine are definitely not as clean looking, but they work perfectly.
I'm also able to control the exact ratios of wood that I want to burn.
When it comes to making my own wood mixes, I could probably get very similar results by mixing and stacking different flavors of Bradley bisquettes.
This is definitely cheaper in cost; I can press these out in less than a minute per bisquette, and the raw ingredients are way, way cheaper.
Either way, cost or no cost savings, it's all a hobby and its been fun to experiment.
One last thing, notice how much finer these wood chips are cut compared to the first batch seen in the photos from the previous post.