Smh & still grinning.
So cold smoking on damp/drizzly Saturday morning 38-40* temps, doing butter, cheese and salt this day. Using 18"
amnts with apple pellets and thought I'd add some cherry chips layered in tube also for flavor. Loaded shelves & made diagram of all cheeses/butters with two screens of salt on the bottom. Lite the tube w/propane torch waited a couple minutes blew out flame and laid it under all the racks, closed door. Nice flow of smoke out of vents, life is good...
Headed into town to fill a couple propane tanks & misc errands. Get back home only to find a smoke stained wall and porch ceiling. Opened door to a melted mess inside, most of the butter was on the walls and cheese shelve, both screens of salt were caked with butter & cream cheese. Only a couple of sticks that were partially melted through the shelve were salvaged out (20 some). Salt that had butter only was rolled in log with plastic wrap and refrigerated. Unfortunately this was very salty butter, still used it for what I could but it was rough. Hard cheeses were edible, minor disformaty they just needed wiped down from butter. Wasn't to many 8 oz blocks of hard cheese, mainly butter and salt for my buddies 84 yr old grandpa, he loves the smoked salt and butter so I keep him stocked up. Butter freezes and salt keeps in pint mason jars.
My lessons learned were always pull smoker away from wall, don't leave, when cold smoking verify the pellets flame blows out when putting tube in smoker. All I can figure is the flame reignited when I closed the door. Not sure if any of you all mix pellets and chips but I have not tried again since. What a frickin mess, sorry but taking a picture was not my fist thought. Cleaned wall/ceiling, while I can still see slight discoloration on wall, the "Warden" has no idea this ever happened as she was gone for the day. Here is pixs of similar set up and some finished cheeses. Note the smoker is away from all walls when being used.
Hey, live and learn right... but still smh / grinning
Good luck !!