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Smoker Construction Help

Posted: Tue Jun 04, 2013 23:33
by ptrescott
Hello!
So this is my first post to the forum, although i've been surfing the site for a while now.

here is my issue... i'm doing an internship making cheese in Ohio. we make Gouda and want to start smoking it. I didn't think it would be too hard, so i did a little research, re-purposed some equipment (low budget, as in use what we have). get it all together and start the fire and... no smoke to the chamber!!!
this is a link to a photo of the set-up http://img22.imageshack.us/img22/6499/img0619jd.jpg

any help or input would be greatly appreciated!

thanks
pete

Posted: Tue Jun 04, 2013 23:56
by ssorllih
I see that you started small. ;). I can build a fire and have it so ventilated that it burns completely with no smoke. Or I can choke down the combustion air and the flames are extinguished and the burning charcoal distills volitiles from the wood and creates smoke. Show us a picture of your fire.

Posted: Wed Jun 05, 2013 00:22
by ptrescott
ah yes... a picture of the fire would have been a good thing to take huh?

we just did a small "test" fire... there was plenty of smoke generation it just wasn't flowing to where it needed to go.

for a while we had a small trickle of smoke in the chamber, but not enough to really smoke anything. so, we added some height to the chimney, watched it for about another 20 minutes and the trickle of smoke went away.

the desired effect here is for about 12-24 hours of cold smoke on the Gouda. at the small amount of about 4000 pounds a year....

Posted: Wed Jun 05, 2013 00:56
by ssorllih
The need is for the heat to generate a draft in the smoke pipe. I have seen situations where a fireplace would not draw the smoke because the air in the chimney would not be displaced by the warm air from the fire and it was necessary to make a newspaper torch and hold it in the flue until the air column became heated. For the fire in your system to put smoke into the smokehouse I think that you should raise the pipe in the fire chamber to the top of the fire structure and leave the dampers open for a while to get a heated column of combustion gases flowing in the pipes.

Posted: Wed Jun 05, 2013 06:38
by Baconologist
If I were you, I'd look into the A-Maze-N smoke generators.
You can place them directly into your smoke chamber and they'll eliminate a lot of headaches!
Send the owner Todd a message with all of your specifics and he'll recommend the best solution.