Debates about how much smoke is too much. How do you smoke your meat? Do you heavy smoke for the first couple hours or do you light smoke throughout the whole process?
As mentioned, producing Thin Blue Smoke (TBS) is the main thing. Once u can consistently manage that THEN amounts of smoke can make more sense :)
I use the A-Maze-N Pellet Smoker (
AMNPS) tray in my electric smoker which makes perfect thin blue smoke of any pellet, even 100% Mesquite!
No depending on the wood and the food and the time it takes to cook it I do different smoke amounts.
Anything under 5hrs I apply double smoke with the
AMNPS using about 65% hickory then even amounts of Maple and Cherry.
On anything 5hrs or more I apply only a single burning row of smoke with the same wood blend.
On briskets I run 12 hours of 100% Mesquite smoke in my
AMNPS and it is amazing. I think people have problems managing mesquite smoke cause of how it burns therefore they get thicker white smoker vs TBS that I get and therefore get the strong mesquite smoke people always talk about.
On bacon I run 100% Hickory for no more than 4.5hrs or so. More than that on bacon is too much smoke for me.
My favorite blend is 70% Apple and 25% Hickory for my bacon and I run that for about 5-6 hours.
For sausage smokes i like to run the same blend but depends on the sausage I am making. Franks I run smoke 30min-45min only. Other smokes sausge about 3 hours.
Jerky I run no more than 2-3hrs of any smoke.
So it all depends on meat and wood but the key is to be producing TBS for the proper type of smoke :)
I hope this helps :)