Help on too much smoke

[Hi-Road]

I have cold smoked 5 pounds of mulling spices (cinnamon, clove, star anise, dried orange peel, whole peppercorns) using apple. Smoke was rolling for 5 hours and there is too much smoke on it. It smells fantastic but 1 ounce in a 750 ml of red wine was undrinkable. I am thinking about blending this smoked batch with another 10 pounds of un-smoked mulling mix, making it a 1/3 smoked and 2/3 un-smoked mix. Is this a sound idea for reeling in the smoke? Are there any other techniques for softening the smoke in a dried spice mix like this? I do a salt and spice blend that I cold smoke over Pecan for 6 hours and it is absolute magic, that's partly why I went 5 hours on the mulling spices. Thanks in advance!

 

[mneeley490]

I've never smoked mulling spices, but I don't think I'd go over an hour if I did. You want it to be subtle. And I don't think mixing them with non-smoked spices would work, either. You'll either end up with some of the heavily smoked pieces in there, or nothing.

 

[SMOKEOCD]

Test by using 1/3 smoked and 2/3 non just for one batch. You may still not like it, but at least you didn’t ruin the new 10 lbs of it. You may have to test many batches all weekend long to figure out the correct ratio. Have fun!

 

[normanaj]

Moving forward reduce the smoke time by at least half. 5 hours is a bit much IMO.