I've been messing with this thing for most of the winter. I'm not sure when last year I picked the smoker up, but I've been tinkering with mixed results and think I'm pretty close to calling it good. My intent was to make a smoker for the sausage I intend to make (if I ever stop procrastinating), but I also wanted to cold smoke bacon and to a small extent cheese. I ripped the entire chip loader out. Thought about flipping the element over, but that was a nogo without some more minor modification that I'm too lazy to do. Went to Tractor Supply and grabbed a few fire bricks, wrapped them in foil and set them above the element on an old cooling rack. I bent the legs so it sat high enough to be clear of the element. I've been playing with the heat in the 100-170 range and the bricks really do help as a thermal mass to keep the temp loss/recovery to a minimum after opening the door.
I initially used an ammo can and aluminum vent hose, but the box was too small and really pumped out some nasty creosote. Also, I should have blasted off the powder coat or whatever those ammo cans are covered in. That too was a nasty smell! Anyhow, I had a friend make me this box. It's much larger than a mailbox or ammo can. I think its 12" H, 14" long and 10" wide. Put a 3" hole in the corner for the hose and a 90 degree elbow on each end.
I had him make it with a removable bottom for ease of cleaning and access to the pellet/dust maze. This is an older picture than the one above as you can see additional holes above.
And here's the topside rig. Yes, I know I'm not supposed to plug into a power strip for large power consumption appliances, but this is still in the testing phase (and that is a seriously capable surge suppressor) and when I do run it for anything other than short periods I use two cords and a dedicated wall outlet. I just need to power the auber and the fan for the cold smoke. It has no problem drafting at higher temps, but needs a little help when trying to cold smoke. I think that is a product of the lack of difference in height between the top of the smoke box and the input to the smoker. Any engineers please feel free to chime in. I might see about lifting the smoker a bit to test that in the future. I rigged up the adjustable speed fan I bought off amazon into the pvc to make a basic venturi as seen in other threads like
tallbm
and his box fan rig. It works like a champ set to a low speed and it's quiet. I suppoe I could run it faster to make sure there is no smoke sinking to the bottom, but with the auber set to 55 with a current outside temp in the high 30's, I have been playing with it with the fan off and it seems to still draft, but I don't want the smoke settling at all so I'm going to run it regardless. The Chef Alarm is just for comparison to the auber. The auber seems to track a bit faster, but I think that's due to the better RTD type sensor in the probe. once settled they stay pretty much exactly the same.
As I'm posting this, I have some cheese smoking for what might be the final testing. I've determined I prefer dust over pellets so we're trying this to see how the taste works out with some cheese. I made a batch a while back which is basically 75% cob pellets 25% Kingsford cherry pellets. I'm going to go on the low end at 2 hours... I'm not a fan of heavy smoke. I already flipped the cheese at the 1 hour mark. I filled the maze with two rows of dust to see how much of it burns in that time span. The last time I ran a quick test on the dust in the maze it burned up 3/4 of a row in about 1.5 hours leaving nothing but fine white ash, so I'm wondering if that's too fast? Anyway, we'll see how this cheese tastes and that will tell me how close I am to calling this good. Thanks for looking!
I initially used an ammo can and aluminum vent hose, but the box was too small and really pumped out some nasty creosote. Also, I should have blasted off the powder coat or whatever those ammo cans are covered in. That too was a nasty smell! Anyhow, I had a friend make me this box. It's much larger than a mailbox or ammo can. I think its 12" H, 14" long and 10" wide. Put a 3" hole in the corner for the hose and a 90 degree elbow on each end.
I had him make it with a removable bottom for ease of cleaning and access to the pellet/dust maze. This is an older picture than the one above as you can see additional holes above.
And here's the topside rig. Yes, I know I'm not supposed to plug into a power strip for large power consumption appliances, but this is still in the testing phase (and that is a seriously capable surge suppressor) and when I do run it for anything other than short periods I use two cords and a dedicated wall outlet. I just need to power the auber and the fan for the cold smoke. It has no problem drafting at higher temps, but needs a little help when trying to cold smoke. I think that is a product of the lack of difference in height between the top of the smoke box and the input to the smoker. Any engineers please feel free to chime in. I might see about lifting the smoker a bit to test that in the future. I rigged up the adjustable speed fan I bought off amazon into the pvc to make a basic venturi as seen in other threads like
tallbm
and his box fan rig. It works like a champ set to a low speed and it's quiet. I suppoe I could run it faster to make sure there is no smoke sinking to the bottom, but with the auber set to 55 with a current outside temp in the high 30's, I have been playing with it with the fan off and it seems to still draft, but I don't want the smoke settling at all so I'm going to run it regardless. The Chef Alarm is just for comparison to the auber. The auber seems to track a bit faster, but I think that's due to the better RTD type sensor in the probe. once settled they stay pretty much exactly the same.
As I'm posting this, I have some cheese smoking for what might be the final testing. I've determined I prefer dust over pellets so we're trying this to see how the taste works out with some cheese. I made a batch a while back which is basically 75% cob pellets 25% Kingsford cherry pellets. I'm going to go on the low end at 2 hours... I'm not a fan of heavy smoke. I already flipped the cheese at the 1 hour mark. I filled the maze with two rows of dust to see how much of it burns in that time span. The last time I ran a quick test on the dust in the maze it burned up 3/4 of a row in about 1.5 hours leaving nothing but fine white ash, so I'm wondering if that's too fast? Anyway, we'll see how this cheese tastes and that will tell me how close I am to calling this good. Thanks for looking!
