I originally built this to cold smoke, and to dry meat (Biltong). It works great. Drying meat, the computer fans push fresh air into the bottom through the pipe and pull it out the top. If anything it works too good and I have to throttle the airflow down. The round screen sieves keep the bugs out. To cold smoke I just cover the holes in the top and fire up! (Unfortunately, smoke time on one load of chips is kinda short). WHAT I WANT TO DO, is to hang long lengths of "Snack Sticks" and hot smoke them. I have a "horizontal" smoker, but laying the sticks on grills is just, well, a pain AND I cant get all that many in there anyway. Soooooo, this of course means adding elec heat to my barrell smoker! (I love a fabrication project). I've searched a ton of threads here and what I think I need to do is... Pull out the plastic pipe and fans..., line the entire barrel, side, tops and bottom, with 150mm of rockwool under a SS liner, use either a WST-1520H or WSD-1200GPH controller with a 1500 watt or 2000 watt heater. (I have plenty of 220v 30 amp service). I guess I could still use the Smoke Daddy, especially since the chip pan would not be accessible during use, but adding a cast iron chip pan a couple of mm above the heater is easy enough to do too, if desired. What are your thoughts? Recommendations for heater? Thanks in advance. Glad to join the group!
