Couple questions on tube type pellet smokers.

[mdboatbum]

I made a makeshift tube smoker for cold smoking. Couldn't afford an Amaze-n tube smoker, but mine's the same basic idea. It's roughly 2" in diameter and 11" long.

My questions are:

1. How hot can I run my smoker (mini WSM) and still use this to generate smoke? I'd like to use it for a turkey smoke at 325˚-350˚ but wasn't sure if it would ignite or anything. I just really like the quality of smoke it produces. I'd be placing it either on the lower rack or directly on the diffuser, which is the steamer insert that came with the pot. I normally just put it in the bottom of the smokey Joe on the coal rack.

2. I have been running my vents wide open and I've gotten between 3 and 4 hours of smoke. On the last smoke, it lasted just a hair over 3 hours. I'm wondering if I can close one of the vents to slow the burn? Not terribly important, as I can just reload, but I was curious.

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• mdboatbum
• Nov 16, 2013

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• mdboatbum
• Oct 17, 2013

 

[dirtsailor2003]

Md I haven't used the tube smoker in the mini while hot smoking. I have used it in the GOSM And that at 285* is where you start running into problems. The pellets will combust and start burning rather than smoldering. I'm not sure that in the mini you could get enough separation from the heat source to the tube to keep that from happening even at the lower temps. Worth a try though. Another issue would be keeping the drippings off the tube. I'm sure some sort of foil tent could be rigged.

 

[mdboatbum]

Cool, thanks for the info. If yours starts flaring up at 285˚, I don't think I'll even try at higher temps. I'm not unhappy at all with the quality of smoke I get from the traditional setup with wood chunks in the WSM, I just figured I'd see if I could make the tube work to remove another variable.

 

[dirtsailor2003]

Yeah it would be great if one could. The other issue I found using the 18" tube is that at temps above say 250, the pellets still smoke but about twice as fast. I get around 8 hours out of the 18" tube cold smoking. Hot smoking I get around 3-4 hours.