Headbutchersouthwest wrote:Been reading up on different ways to cold smoke & the smouldering times of dry or slightly damp sawdust ...well known books & sites saying spray the dust with water to dampen the dust so it smoulders slowly & giving a long smoke ,but this method is only used with some sort of heat source.
vagreys wrote:Headbutchersouthwest wrote:Been reading up on different ways to cold smoke & the smouldering times of dry or slightly damp sawdust ...well known books & sites saying spray the dust with water to dampen the dust so it smoulders slowly & giving a long smoke ,but this method is only used with some sort of heat source.
Emphasis added. This is key, and it doesn't really matter whether one is talking about small-scale or larger smokehouses - the nature of the heat source is fundamental to the answer. Sawdust in a pan over an electric hotplate element is very different from a CSG or straw and sawdust on the floor or a trough with green hickory smoldering away. It really comes down to soot control, doesn't it? Dry or dampened depends on the method and nature of smoke production. Dry is absolutely necessary for a CSG maze-type smoke generator, but dry makes for more soot on the meat if burned in a pan over an electric burner. Dampened sawdust in a pan over a burner produces a negligible amount of steam while reducing soot production in that method of smoke generation, but would fail to burn in a maze-type smoke generator. That's why smoking is at least as much art as science.
wheels wrote:Why do you need to do the whole smoke in 12 - 16 hours? Many people would smoke for '12 hours smoke/12 hours rest' for maybe 3 - 5 cycles using just a trickle of smoke.
HTH
Phil
Well im In no rush so timings are only based on what others have told me and shown me and the results are great . I know one charcuterie who can smoke bacon / duck breasts etc within 2 hours using an old commercial smoker that recycles the smoke it generates and the results are great . Another butchery that use to smoke my meat for me use to put it in the smoker at 5pm and at 7am the next day it was a lovely golden colour and smoked right thru and they are using a home made smoker that has a automatic turning screw that feeds course oak sawdust onto a hot plate .
I'm just trying to emulate what I've seen but it's just not working for me perhaps I'm missing something ..?
Headbutchersouthwest wrote:
Been reading up on different ways to cold smoke & the smouldering times of dry or slightly damp sawdust !
Firstly I've always been told to cold smoke with only dry dust but to limit air flow so that the dust smoulders slowly!
But I've seen multi able articles in well known books & sites saying spray the dust with water to dampen the dust so it smoulders slowly & giving a long smoke
but this method is only used with some sort of heat source.
So what's the verdict here ? Dry dust or dampen the dust ...?
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