New cold smoke generator designed in the UK

[Ruralidle]

Geoff

The other option is to take a holiday in Canada and bring back some maple syrup yourself. We visited the west coast last year and have about 3 litres of the stuff - sorry, all for poersonal consumtioin - but once you've paid the air fare and enjoyed your holiday then approx 30CAD for 1 litre of dark maple syrup is an absolute bargain

Richard

[wheels]

I wonder if you can use either birch or walnut sap in a similar way?

Phil

[Richierich]

I wonder if you can use either birch or walnut sap in a similar way?

Phil

Seems a lot of money to go all the way to Canada for Birch sap.

[Ruralidle]

Ah but - Canada is so lovely (in the wilds) that we don't need much of an excuse to use oiur savings and have a visit. The great quality, competitively priced maple syrup is just a bonus!

[Richierich]

Ah but - Canada is so lovely (in the wilds) that we don't need much of an excuse to use oiur savings and have a visit. The great quality, competitively priced maple syrup is just a bonus!

Must try to get back to Vancouver this year, lovely part of the world. Spent some time there in spring a couple of years ago, fancy trying summer this time.

For those interested in the link I posted to the hotsmoked website, I have ordered some dust, will let you know how I get on, postage is a bit steep though. £5.95 for a 500g pack of dust. Will try in future to buy my dust from Ian at macs bbq, far more reasonable.

[wallie]

Ah but - Canada is so lovely (in the wilds) that we don't need much of an excuse to use oiur savings and have a visit. The great quality, competitively priced maple syrup is just a bonus!

Check the exchange rate out against the falling UK pound.
I go every year to my daughters and I see this year it has dropped by nearly 50cents to the pound.
Quite a hefty drop.
Saying that I will be back in August, I love it that much!

wallie

[Zubar]

Having spent hours reading both books and the web on cold smoking, I bought one of these. I was plannig to build some setup but this looked simpler.

I mush say i am blown away by it. Having cured a side of salmon I brushed the frost off my kettle BBQ, removed the coal pan and placed the generator in the bottom. The bag of supplied dust was an exact amount.
Lit with the candle in 1 min ish.

I kept going back outside with a mini blow torch and a new bag of dust expecting it to have gone out or run out. No, it went on for 8 hours and I had to go to bed! This morning it had burnt the complete run and the smellwas out of this world. I have just put it on again with another fill, but am now worried this will be too much!

Don't be decieved by the small size of the unit or the apparently small amount of smoke it appears to give off. It should easily fill a large cabinet with a constant level of smoke for a good 10 hours.

I'll let you know how it tastes!!

C

[Ianinfrance]

Well!!

I've finally bitten the bullet and ordered me one too. With that I can mix and match with the smoke generator of the Bradley if I want to jump start the smoking process for example, or if I want to use different woods.

The only slight concern I have is over supplies of wood dust. I'm about 800 miles from Leicester, so popping into my local friendly dust supplier isn't really a possibility. MacBBQ don't send wood outside Europe so that's not a possibility either. I have a feeling that I'll be asking quite a number of my B&B guests to pop a bag or two in the car when they come out!! Not MUCH odder than asking them to bring me muhsroom ketchup really, and I've got most of my regulars pretty well trained.

I suppose I could phone Ashwood smoking chips to see what the postal possibilities are. Anyone got any ideas?

[saucisson]

Last time I looked they tend to ship by the lorry load so shipping is a no-no unless you want a lorry load. Hence my failed attempt to go and get some.

I might try and set up a group buy

Dave

[wheels]

I think they mentioned that a bag would cost £14 to ship in the UK.

Phil

[saucisson]

Ah, maybe those are from the days when I only wanted 500g and the shipping was rather expensive in comparison.

Dave

[wheels]

It is expensive Dave and I got the impression that are loath to send stuff this way - it could be worth costing a group purchase - but postage would still rear it's ugly head. You'd be looking at £20 ish for beech/oak and £50 ish for a bag of Cherry, although the postage may be more for cherry as, if I recall correctly it's a heavier bag.

Phil

[Ianinfrance]

Well

I've now ordered my CSG, and had a friendly email from Ian who said that he's looking into cheaper ways of shipping wood to Europe, so that may solve the problem.

I've been thinking - faint.... swoon (don't worry, I promise not to do again it for at least a day) While it makes sense for someone who lives round the corner from Ashwood to pop in and collect it, if they are really more geared towards shipping in large quantities, it could embarrass their facilities if lots of people ask them to ship five or ten kilos all over the country.

The dust (already dried and ground to the right condition) from MacBBQ costs me - shipped to the UK and including VAT about a pound for an 8 to 10 hour smoking session which using my Bradley as a smoking chamber) should let me cold smoke plenty of haddock, bacon and salmon for a quid. Frankly if Ian can ship it out here for a reasonable price then even a couple of quid a batch is WAY better than using Bradley's Bisquettes. And that's assuming that I always want to smoke for the full 8-10 hours.. For lightly smoked bacon or haddock, I could well imagine that nearer 4-5 hours might well do me, and that would bring the cost even further down.

Mind you, if one of my guests happened to live in Kettering or round about there, and seemed amenable......(snigger)

[lemonD]

Ian,
Could you find a local carpenter, he'll probably be glad to get rid of the stuff.
I get all my oak for smoking from a local joiner.
Just make sure he doesn't mix different hardwood with softwood.
Sieve the fine dust out of the shavings and put the shavings through an old coffee grinder.

LD.

[jenny_haddow]

The local carpenter would probably be your best bet Ian. I've been offered as much oak sawdust as I can carry away by our local artisan joiner (he makes posh kitchens). France certainly isn't short of wood and people who work with it so you should be able to keep yourself supplied.

Jen