13 Years in the Making

[wolf13]

Joined 13 years ago and continued to read and not post. Ended up with a few smokers along the way, and settled on my KBQ as my bbq (love that thing!).

I have moved a few times, located north of Auburn, CA), and now have much more land to do as I please including building a smokehouse for my wild game sausages and bacon. I have a bunch of spare tongue and groove cedar - thinking of a 3'x3'x5' smokehouse. Little undecided on propane vs electric but can easily run 220 to the location or a propane line off the house supply. Hopefully you'll see a progress thread on here once I start framing it out. I am open to ideas on electric vs propane.

Have a spare fridge that I'll set up for the curing, and off we will go! Been doing a lot of research on the curing chamber; special thanks to @indaswamp for all the free information put on here!

 

[JckDanls 07]

Myself I vote for electric with a smoke tube... With the right PID controller it can be set up to ramp temps up automatically... Meaning you don't have to go out and make adjustments every hour like you have to when using gas... Which I am totally against unless it's set up to be fail safe... Meaning using a controller that will turn the gas off if you have a flame out... Which is very common when using such low heat (small flame)... If gas is not turned off when a flame out happens, well then you just pouring raw gas into the smokehouse until you go out and find it not lit (or you have a remote therm. and notice the temps falling)... Then it essentially becomes a bomb waiting for an ignition source...
I know people use them and haven't had a problem... YET ... With electric I can run overnight and not have any worries... Temps will ramp up automatically... What's the worst that can happen if you lose power...

 

[voyager 663rd]

Welcome from Canada

Better late than never to say hi

 

[voyager 663rd]

Welcome from Canada

Better late than never to say hi

 

[indaswamp]

Thanks. Glad what I posted helped you. I have a smokehouse 2.5' X 2.5' X 6.5' tall, I use propane for 80% of the heat with a 16" cast iron pan on the burner. I put chunks of hard woods on the pan for smoke and about 20% of the heat. The propane allows for smooth temperature control.

 

[ifitsdeadsmokeit]

You can hook a pid up to control the gas flow too. I am including a thermo couple shutoff on mine in case the flame goes out for some reason. I need to finish mine up, caught a bad case of lazy and rather be out on the lake.

 

[voyager 663rd]

Hmm. My bad--you posted an intro almost 13 years ago so.....welcome back I guess.