Before I got my AMNPS, and before I created my Mailbox (Popcorn) Mod, I got some really awful results with my MES 30 smoker. It was so bad that two years ago I created a post, Thinking of selling my MES 30 where I talked about the lip-numbing results I got from all the creosote that the MES created.
After I got the AMNPS and especially after I started creating and scrubbing the smoke externally, my results improved dramatically.
But, the other day, as I preheated the smoker, I noticed that, before I added any food and before I attached my external smoker mod, I was seeing as much smoke coming out of the MES exhaust port as I would see in the middle of the smoke. I realized that this was coming from all that black stuff that had accumulated from 2+ years of smoking, the first portion of which was when I was creating bad smoke.
Since the smoke I was seeing during preheat was coming from this coating of old stuff, could I still be getting some residual "bad stuff" in my food? Could I get a better taste by cleaning my smoker?
This has been preying on my mind long before I saw this preheat smoke, but when I saw that, I finally decided to roll up my sleeves and clean the smoker. It took 5+ hours and, because my glove broke without my realizing it, I have black fingers that four days later haven't turned flesh color again. I got it pretty clean, as you can see here (this was taken after I did my first smoke after the cleaning, so it looked better than this immediately after the cleaning):
[I apologize for this rotated pic, but this forum's software is so screwed up that it rotates images that weren't initially rotated. I wasted fifteen minutes of my life trying to find a way, in this forum, to get the image to display correctly. I gave up].
My initial smoke, using almonds, was promising. I got a very clean-tasting, pleasant smoke. I'll report back as I continue to use this clean smoker as to whether cleanliness really makes for a better smoke (assuming that the existing gunk contained a lot of creosote), or whether it doesn't really matter.
After I got the AMNPS and especially after I started creating and scrubbing the smoke externally, my results improved dramatically.
But, the other day, as I preheated the smoker, I noticed that, before I added any food and before I attached my external smoker mod, I was seeing as much smoke coming out of the MES exhaust port as I would see in the middle of the smoke. I realized that this was coming from all that black stuff that had accumulated from 2+ years of smoking, the first portion of which was when I was creating bad smoke.
Since the smoke I was seeing during preheat was coming from this coating of old stuff, could I still be getting some residual "bad stuff" in my food? Could I get a better taste by cleaning my smoker?
This has been preying on my mind long before I saw this preheat smoke, but when I saw that, I finally decided to roll up my sleeves and clean the smoker. It took 5+ hours and, because my glove broke without my realizing it, I have black fingers that four days later haven't turned flesh color again. I got it pretty clean, as you can see here (this was taken after I did my first smoke after the cleaning, so it looked better than this immediately after the cleaning):
[I apologize for this rotated pic, but this forum's software is so screwed up that it rotates images that weren't initially rotated. I wasted fifteen minutes of my life trying to find a way, in this forum, to get the image to display correctly. I gave up].
My initial smoke, using almonds, was promising. I got a very clean-tasting, pleasant smoke. I'll report back as I continue to use this clean smoker as to whether cleanliness really makes for a better smoke (assuming that the existing gunk contained a lot of creosote), or whether it doesn't really matter.
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