Blue Smoke

[shultz34]

How do you keep the blue smoke flowing? My smoke starts out blue but will quickly change to white smoke. I have soaked my wood chunks as little as one hour to as much as all night. I keep the temp around 225 F. I have an offset horizontal smoker.

 

[forluvofsmoke]

Here's a few of the most recent discussions on the subject...alot of in depth discussion here, so give them a look and keep an open mind:

Excessive white smoke:
http://www.smokingmeatforums.com/for...hin+blue+smoke

Strange taste:
http://www.smokingmeatforums.com/for...hin+blue+smoke

Enough is enough:
http://www.smokingmeatforums.com/for...hin+blue+smoke

These all dated back to within the past 3 weeks. Hope this helps you out.

Eric

 

[tasunkawitko]

great suggestions above - one thing you can do to help is to pre-warm OR pre-burn your wood, depending on what yu're going for. i've learned to stick a chunk (un-soaked) in the far end of the charcoal basket away from the fire. as it gets hot, it gets closer and closer to burning temperature without releasing the nasty, billowing white smoke. that kind of smoke is simply from wood that isn't up to temperature yet, in my experience.

by prewarming as i describe above or another method, OR pre-burning wood down to coals in a separate chimney, brazier, hibachi etc., you can eliminate the nasty stuff and get straight to the good stuff, the sweet, oh-so-good stuff which is thin and blue, or barely visible at all - some of the best smells i've had from wood are when i see no smoke at all, but you can definitely smell it.

having said all the above, this is still smoking we're talking about. you can caount on some white smoke, but when you get too much billowing smoke for too long, then you'd better put the beer down and open up your intake or the door of your firebox, let it burn off and then close it again when the wood has reached temperature.

side note: some flks actually have mounted chimneys or smokestacks on their fireboxes, then when they add wood they can open up this secondary exhaust and ket the white smoke escape there until it is gone, then close the chimney and have the TBS float into the smoking chamber.

 

[richoso1]

Sometimes soaking chunks will produce steam, and then again too much wood will produce a lot of white billowing smoke. You don't need a lot of chunks at one time, if you can smell them burning you're ok without seeing the smoke.

 

[eman]

I usually get the white smoke first then it settels down to the nice TBS.
never have soaked any chips or chunks.

 

[mballi3011]

It could be as easy as too much wood. Soaking or not soakin shouldn't have to much to do with it. I don't soak my wood and it burns nice and slow.