Little about me... I've been bbq'ing for my entire life. Literally. My family owns a smokehouse/fish-house on the great lakes in northern michigan. I've done everything from wild game on up, sausages, hams, bacon, poultry, etc etc etc. I own 2 smokers and a hibachi all custom built by myself, so this isn't my first rodeo. But for the life of me I cannot seem to solve this issue. A couple years ago we moved from michigan to alabama (wife, son & myself). Going from a relatively low humidity to an extremely high humidity all year. So now when cold smoking jerky I'm having a huge issue with condensation forming and droplets falling on the meat. Unfortunately that means it's picking up any "dirt" from the walls of the smoker and flavoring the meat with it. Can't be having that. Here's my process...
I prefer a thicker cut of jerky (chewy inside), so the meat gets cut roughly 1/2" by 1" strips with the grain (old school). Into a brine solution for a minimum of 5 days. Then everything comes out, gets pat dried and laid out on racks. Fire up the cold smoker (oak) and it's all cold to start with for about the first 8 hours. Let the meat soak up as much smoke as possible and then gradually start to warm up to a max of 145-150f. Never any higher. I just want to finish drying the meat but not cook it. Problem is, the humidity down here is so damn high no matter what I do condensation seems to form. I try to push as much air through as possible since that seems to help, but I also don't want to lose to much heat at the end for the final drying process.
Cheese itself has it's own challenges down here because of the 3/4 year summers lol So when I do cheese it has to be in what they call the "winter" down here. The rest of the year the cheese will start to sweat within 10 minutes and melt by 15 just in the outside air temps. On average it hits about 80-90% humidity year round, even when it's "cold" out. Is airflow the only real option? Try to keep it moving as much as possible to draw out as much humidity as possible? The heat inside vs. the cold outside is going to be a huge fight I can see to overcome. So any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.
I prefer a thicker cut of jerky (chewy inside), so the meat gets cut roughly 1/2" by 1" strips with the grain (old school). Into a brine solution for a minimum of 5 days. Then everything comes out, gets pat dried and laid out on racks. Fire up the cold smoker (oak) and it's all cold to start with for about the first 8 hours. Let the meat soak up as much smoke as possible and then gradually start to warm up to a max of 145-150f. Never any higher. I just want to finish drying the meat but not cook it. Problem is, the humidity down here is so damn high no matter what I do condensation seems to form. I try to push as much air through as possible since that seems to help, but I also don't want to lose to much heat at the end for the final drying process.
Cheese itself has it's own challenges down here because of the 3/4 year summers lol So when I do cheese it has to be in what they call the "winter" down here. The rest of the year the cheese will start to sweat within 10 minutes and melt by 15 just in the outside air temps. On average it hits about 80-90% humidity year round, even when it's "cold" out. Is airflow the only real option? Try to keep it moving as much as possible to draw out as much humidity as possible? The heat inside vs. the cold outside is going to be a huge fight I can see to overcome. So any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.
