Hello,
I have just cold smoked my first batch of belly bacon. While the bacon was great (1.5% salt and 0.75% sugar) using the cure calculator linked on this site. The bacon it's self is cured well has great color. I have a MES40 that I use to cold smoke with an A-Maze-N pellet maze. I used apple pellets and cold smoked for 8 hours and the bacon was so smoky and acrid tasting that it almost ruined the bacon (let's be honest even over smoky bacon is still good bacon).
So I ran into this over smoky and acrid flavor once before when I tried cold smoke some cheese with the same set up but for only 2 hours. I thought that I may have lit too much pellets and that was my issue so this time for the bacon I torched the pellets for 45 seconds and blew out the flame and let it go hoping it would be good. But, it still came out way too strong but had excellent color (sorry no pics).
My question is am I doing something wrong with this pellet smoker? I had my MES40 off with chip tube removed and top vent about 2/3 open.
I have just cold smoked my first batch of belly bacon. While the bacon was great (1.5% salt and 0.75% sugar) using the cure calculator linked on this site. The bacon it's self is cured well has great color. I have a MES40 that I use to cold smoke with an A-Maze-N pellet maze. I used apple pellets and cold smoked for 8 hours and the bacon was so smoky and acrid tasting that it almost ruined the bacon (let's be honest even over smoky bacon is still good bacon).
So I ran into this over smoky and acrid flavor once before when I tried cold smoke some cheese with the same set up but for only 2 hours. I thought that I may have lit too much pellets and that was my issue so this time for the bacon I torched the pellets for 45 seconds and blew out the flame and let it go hoping it would be good. But, it still came out way too strong but had excellent color (sorry no pics).
My question is am I doing something wrong with this pellet smoker? I had my MES40 off with chip tube removed and top vent about 2/3 open.