Well, it's bacon time again. I bought 40 lbs. from Costco a couple weeks ago, dividing them up into 20 lbs. each of Maple and Black Pepper. Both were dry cured.
The Maple was done with both maple sugar in the calculations, and some bourbon cask maple syrup, to make a paste. I am hoping this will give it more maple flavor without having to resort to maple extract, because I just don't know how to calculate something that concentrated. (Yes, there is cure #1 in there; it was just camera shy.)
As my fridge smoker is still on the fritz, I am dividing the batches up this 26° morning. Maple will go into the MES30 to be warm smoked as usual, with corn cob and cherry in the mailbox mod.
But since I don't relish the idea of smoking all day Saturday AND Sunday, I'm going to try a cold/hot smoke for the Pepper batch in my GMG Daniel Boone. Starting out cold with 2 loads of Lumberjack Competition Blend (Maple-Hickory-Cherry) pellets in my 6" tube smoker in the GMG. This should put about 3 hours of cold smoke to them. Then I will turn it on to the lowest setting of 150° with more of the same.
I'm using a couple of jerky racks that I bought on Amazon, separated by 2" wood blocks. They're a good fit for my Daniel Boone. I placed the thicker pieces on the right side, which tends to be the hotter side, but I'm not real concerned if I'm staying at 150°. I've never done it either way in the GMG, so this will be an adventure.
Hot smoking is new to me, but there are a couple threads here by people who have used a GMG to do it. It appears that about 6 hours in the hot smoke should do it. We shall see.
Mike
The Maple was done with both maple sugar in the calculations, and some bourbon cask maple syrup, to make a paste. I am hoping this will give it more maple flavor without having to resort to maple extract, because I just don't know how to calculate something that concentrated. (Yes, there is cure #1 in there; it was just camera shy.)
As my fridge smoker is still on the fritz, I am dividing the batches up this 26° morning. Maple will go into the MES30 to be warm smoked as usual, with corn cob and cherry in the mailbox mod.
But since I don't relish the idea of smoking all day Saturday AND Sunday, I'm going to try a cold/hot smoke for the Pepper batch in my GMG Daniel Boone. Starting out cold with 2 loads of Lumberjack Competition Blend (Maple-Hickory-Cherry) pellets in my 6" tube smoker in the GMG. This should put about 3 hours of cold smoke to them. Then I will turn it on to the lowest setting of 150° with more of the same.
I'm using a couple of jerky racks that I bought on Amazon, separated by 2" wood blocks. They're a good fit for my Daniel Boone. I placed the thicker pieces on the right side, which tends to be the hotter side, but I'm not real concerned if I'm staying at 150°. I've never done it either way in the GMG, so this will be an adventure.
Hot smoking is new to me, but there are a couple threads here by people who have used a GMG to do it. It appears that about 6 hours in the hot smoke should do it. We shall see.
Mike
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