- Nov 23, 2023
- 29
- 19
After buying a Pig last November, I had the idea of building a smokehouse. Cold, hot, I did not know. Just drew up some plans based on others on the internet and on here and started back on Feb 1st after buying rough cut cedar.
A lot of long hours. After buying the rough cut cedar that I thought I needed, I quickly realized that I needed to rip the boards in half which meant I had twice as much wood. Enter the second smokehouse! Sure I could probably hot and cold smoke in just one of them, but this was more a hobby and labor of love so I figured why not? So I built two. The pipe on the hot smokehouse is only 26 inches long, whereas the pipe on the cold smokehouse is 42 inches in length. I’ve made a movie that incorporates still images, Time-lapse photography, and other videos I took during my journey. I just need to do some final edits before I post it wherever I’m supposed to…
I did suffered a herniated disc, either from pouring all the concrete for the foundations, playing racquetball, or combination of both. That slowed the process down quite a bit, but this morning I finished both and now I am curing both, and will run a couple burn/smoke cycles with empty smokehouses to get everything ready for when I put meat in about 2 weeks from now.
I have not installed the Thermoworks signals that I bought, but I’ll probably do that sometime this week. All in all I’ve learned a lot of skills making these smokehouses; operating a drill, press, laying bricks and pouring concrete, and to do this all by myself makes it all that much more worth it! Are those of you that gave me advice along the way, I listened… Thank you all so much!
