Setting up a smoke house

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MIMeats

Newbie
Original poster
Mar 15, 2022
6
3
I am new to this, I bought a house that has an old smokehouse out back. The interior space is 6'x10' and 7 or 8' up to the hanging rack. It hasn't been used in quite some time and didn't have any of the "smoke pit" stuff when I bought it. I am looking to clean it out and use it as a smoke house again but don't really know where to start to setup the bottom area. Any help on how to build the smoker in the smoke house would be appreciated.

This is the space I'm working with, obviously I need to clean it out, it kinda turned into a shed, don't judge me for that.

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You just need a ring to hold some saw dust at the bottom. Obviously Check the hanging situation as far as racks or dowels. Make sure there is ventilation. Here is my buddies it's a little bigger than yours but close. His is over 100yr old and these are country hams
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Can't be of much help but curious as to what you end up with. Just one thought...depending on how much you plan on doing at one time...maybe build another interior wall to shrink the size of it.

Ryan
 
I can’t be much help either! Hopefully some others with experience on this are along soon. I did find a book years ago, before I came here, that was a good read and seemed to have a lot of legit designs you can refer to; “Meat Smoking and Smokehouse Design” I just checked and it’s on Amazon.
 
Wow!
How is it fired?
Friend of mine has a similar sized one on the farm and it is their small one. They fire it for 24 hours to get everything to temp.

Cleaning? Get the junk out and sweep the walls, ceiling, and floor to clean the cobwebs.
 
Wow!
How is it fired?
Friend of mine has a similar sized one on the farm and it is their small one. They fire it for 24 hours to get everything to temp.

Cleaning? Get the junk out and sweep the walls, ceiling, and floor to clean the cobwebs.

That's what I'm trying to figure out. It's a sealed building, so it wasn't built for a separate burner, but there isn't anything in it to show me how they fired it in the past. I'm trying to figure out how to setup a safe firebox inside that will still allow me to maintain the right temp and humidity.
 
You just need a ring to hold some saw dust at the bottom. Obviously Check the hanging situation as far as racks or dowels. Make sure there is ventilation. Here is my buddies it's a little bigger than yours but close. His is over 100yr old and these are country hamsView attachment 529073View attachment 529074
I'd be interested in knowing more about how that works. Is this just a cold smoke setup or is he able to heat with that pan too? Does he have an inlet for fresh air somewhere? My building seems to seal up pretty tight at the bottom with no inlets and it is vented at the top like you'd expect.

Hanging is done on dowels in the ceiling.

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The smokehouse I posted is cold smoking only. You'll be hard pressed to heat something as large as what you posted for hot smoking. The one I posted exhausts out of the open eves
 
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I threw a metal garbage can in and did an open burn just to see what it did. I knocked it down to coals and smothered it and it seems to be doing ok at holding temp in the upper 100s for a few hours now. I ordered a 55gal drum firebox kit and I'm gonna duct that in the side and see how well it holds temp. Worst case I'll do the pan on the floor cold smoke way, but I'm figuring with enough coal/wood I can keep a drum cooking well enough to heat the building with as well as its holding temp now.

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That can galvanized?
Nah, we aren't that fancy around here. Even if it was, that's not what we will be cooking with. Will be using a heavier fresh steel drum for the firebox, just waiting on some of the parts to come in now.
 
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The thing with a metal garbage can is smart. This way, you can see how the house reacts to loads of smoke inside. I think it looks fine and you can smoke meat there with no problem. In our village, we don’t even build any houses. We just dig a hole in the ground, put a barrel there, then meat and cover it with a lead leaving two small holes in the bottom and top of the barrel. Then we put some wood underneath or in the barrel itself and set it on fire. The meat after such a process of smoking is finger-licking good. But if you want to build a special smoking house, it’s your decision. You can look up more information about houses construction here https://www.boutiquehomeplans.com/the-process.
 
Have run it a few times now, here's an update.

With a single burner barrel it has been great for cold smoking and for lower temp beef cooking (med-rare ribeyes are great), but it needs a second burner if I'm gonna do any roast cooking. I'm honestly pretty happy with the way it works now.

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Looks like I'm late to the party, but I'll second the statement that this was likely built for cold smoking only for food preservation back in the day.

I'll also second that the smoke is black and dirty....at least that is how it looks to me in the pic.....
 
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