Covered tray filled with ice? Will condensation form?

[sigmo]

 
First things I think of when people put water or open ice cubes in a smoker is an MES. If you do that with an MES, you add too much humidity into a smoker that holds heat & humidity so well

An MES works much better without adding more humidity. That's why I use a jug with about 3/4 full of frozen water. No Humidity added.

The humidity also makes it harder to keep an AMNPS smoking.

Bear

I certainly agree with that, particularly when hot smoking.  I gave up on the water pan in the MES very soon after getting it!

In the case of this cold smoke of the butter, the ice hardly melted, and the cool temperature in the smoker didn't allow a lot of evaporation.  BUT, it still would have been nicer if I'd have had some already frozen bottles of water.  In this case, I had to use what was on hand.

I could have covered the tray with foil to seal it in, but it never became necessary in this particular instance.

I need to clean out enough space in one of the freezers to be able to freeze a few jugs of water to have on hand in case I need to cool down a smoker in the future. 

 

[Bearcarver]

 
I certainly agree with that, particularly when hot smoking.  I gave up on the water pan in the MES very soon after getting it!

In the case of this cold smoke of the butter, the ice hardly melted, and the cool temperature in the smoker didn't allow a lot of evaporation.  BUT, it still would have been nicer if I'd have had some already frozen bottles of water.  In this case, I had to use what was on hand.

I could have covered the tray with foil to seal it in, but it never became necessary in this particular instance.

I need to clean out enough space in one of the freezers to be able to freeze a few jugs of water to have on hand in case I need to cool down a smoker in the future. 

I kill two birds with one stone on this.

I have a Fridge in my basement that I only use for curing @ 47°.

It has a freezer above it that I can't set as low as I like my freezers (Zero), without the fridge getting too low for curing.

So I keep a bunch of frozen Jugs of water in that freezer. The other bird is I save $$$ on electric by keeping the frozen jugs in that freezer, occupying space.

Bear