Wade Leishman
TVWBB Member
Well, after trolling this forum for the past few weeks, I saw a few threads recently about people trying smoked cheese for the first time and decided to give it a go on my 18.5" WSM. I ordered and received the A-Maze-N 12-Inch Pellet Tube Smoker with Apple BBQ Pellets from Amazon and gave it a go on some cheese this morning.
It has been "cool" (California relative) in the mornings so thought I could get it started early and hope that it wouldn't warm up too much to worry about the cheese getting soft. I saw some comments about people putting Ice in the Water Pan to keep the smoker cool. I decided to go one step further and fill up the pan and deep freeze it overnight to make sure.
I started the Apple Wood pellets in Smoker Tube about 7:15am today and the outside temp was 41* (a bit warmer than it had been the past few mornings).
I lit the open end of the tube as instructed (I wonder if I couldn't use on the Weber Starter Cubes instead) and waited about 10 minutes
I used an array of standard store bought Tillamook Cheese for the first attempt (Except for the Mozz). I know it's not Top Tier Cheese, but I figured it would be good for a test run and I wouldn't be out a ton of $ if it didn't work out well.
Here is is arranged on the tray (I ended up flipping each block a couple times, but more on that below).
Once the Pellets had been burning for about 10 minutes, blew out the flame (as instructions indicate) and put the smoker together and put the cheese on.
Because I use a BBQ Guru for my normal meat smokes I have 2 of the 3 lower vents closed and taped off and the 3rd has the BBQ Guru Fan Adapter thing. I didn't really think about it, and didn't have my Guru fan plugged in to start with. About 90mins into the smoke, I could see some coming from the top vent, but just a "trickle", nor really the "flow" that I expected. When I'd open the lid, it seemed like there was a lot of smoker sort of just hanging out in there, but not really "moving around" much. I flipped the blocks a couple times and at first, it seemed that only the "top" of each block had any smoke color and not so much on the sides or bottom. I attributed that to possibly the smoke not "moving" through the smoker enough to surround the cheese. So I decided to plug in the BBQ Guru fan with the vent damper open just a little bit. After that I could really see the smoke moving out the top vent. So I left it running like that for another 90 minutes or so (3 hours total) and then took the Cheese off. The outside temp at the end was 48*.
There was "some" color on my blocks, but not as dark as I've seen on pics from some of the other threads. All had a great smoke smell. I let them "rest" for a while before Vac-Sealing them up.
Sealed, Labeled and into the Fridge for a few weeks.
I didn't take a pic of the water pan after the smoke but there was still a pretty good chunk of ice in it. Maybe 25-30% "frozen" still. So not sure if it changed much, or if the freezing of the water pan really mattered, or if I would have done the whole smoke when it was less than 40* or so, but overall it seems to have gone OK and we'll see how everything tastes in a few weeks.
Thanks to those that posted threads on here describing their cheese smokes to get me motivated to give it a try!
Comments and suggestions welcome!
-W
It has been "cool" (California relative) in the mornings so thought I could get it started early and hope that it wouldn't warm up too much to worry about the cheese getting soft. I saw some comments about people putting Ice in the Water Pan to keep the smoker cool. I decided to go one step further and fill up the pan and deep freeze it overnight to make sure.
I started the Apple Wood pellets in Smoker Tube about 7:15am today and the outside temp was 41* (a bit warmer than it had been the past few mornings).
I lit the open end of the tube as instructed (I wonder if I couldn't use on the Weber Starter Cubes instead) and waited about 10 minutes
I used an array of standard store bought Tillamook Cheese for the first attempt (Except for the Mozz). I know it's not Top Tier Cheese, but I figured it would be good for a test run and I wouldn't be out a ton of $ if it didn't work out well.
Here is is arranged on the tray (I ended up flipping each block a couple times, but more on that below).
Once the Pellets had been burning for about 10 minutes, blew out the flame (as instructions indicate) and put the smoker together and put the cheese on.
Because I use a BBQ Guru for my normal meat smokes I have 2 of the 3 lower vents closed and taped off and the 3rd has the BBQ Guru Fan Adapter thing. I didn't really think about it, and didn't have my Guru fan plugged in to start with. About 90mins into the smoke, I could see some coming from the top vent, but just a "trickle", nor really the "flow" that I expected. When I'd open the lid, it seemed like there was a lot of smoker sort of just hanging out in there, but not really "moving around" much. I flipped the blocks a couple times and at first, it seemed that only the "top" of each block had any smoke color and not so much on the sides or bottom. I attributed that to possibly the smoke not "moving" through the smoker enough to surround the cheese. So I decided to plug in the BBQ Guru fan with the vent damper open just a little bit. After that I could really see the smoke moving out the top vent. So I left it running like that for another 90 minutes or so (3 hours total) and then took the Cheese off. The outside temp at the end was 48*.
There was "some" color on my blocks, but not as dark as I've seen on pics from some of the other threads. All had a great smoke smell. I let them "rest" for a while before Vac-Sealing them up.
Sealed, Labeled and into the Fridge for a few weeks.
I didn't take a pic of the water pan after the smoke but there was still a pretty good chunk of ice in it. Maybe 25-30% "frozen" still. So not sure if it changed much, or if the freezing of the water pan really mattered, or if I would have done the whole smoke when it was less than 40* or so, but overall it seems to have gone OK and we'll see how everything tastes in a few weeks.
Thanks to those that posted threads on here describing their cheese smokes to get me motivated to give it a try!
Comments and suggestions welcome!
-W
