Cold Smoking Accessory


 
If your still looking for a way to cold smoke. I use an old Luhr Jensen like this for cold smoking. Things like eggs, cheese, homemade Canadian bacon, nuts, jerky, fish, etc. I have the original one I bought in 1986. They use shredded flavor wood but pellets work fine. It helps to hit pellets with a small propane touch for a bit.

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Yep. The Big Chief and Little Chief are the ticket for most cold smoking. You can still pick either one up for around $100 if you watch Amazon for sales. Add wood chips or pellets to the pan, plug it in and you're smoking in ~15 minutes (longer to get pellets going). They run at about 165 degrees F when the ambient temperature is in the low to mid 70s. To run it cooler for cheese, just lean the front cover up against the front, leaving a couple inch gap at the top and put the cheese on the top 2 shelves.
During the harvest season, I leave out the wood and use mine as a dehydrator too. Great to keep the heat outside instead of in the kitchen with the regular dehydrator.
 
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My big move was to invest into a Smokai to mount onto the rotisserie bracket on one of my Silver A or B gassers. I’m hoping to do true cold smoking where the Smokai is doing the work and the grill is just a vessel for the smoke and not actually turned on.

Which version of the Smokai did you get ?
 
Looks like experimentation and education will be my focus over the next week or so. I’m picking up a pork belly on Saturday which means it won’t be ready for smoke until the following Sunday. In the meantime, I’ll scour the web and forum threads and probably be back here for more Q&A. I’m also going to fire up a single burner on low this weekend on the Silver B to see how low I can maintain temperature. If that works out, I can at least duplicate what others are doing with charcoal and chips for my first attempt while simultaneously experimenting with chips, pellets and smoke output on the new toy.
 

This is my cold smoke setup, too, for salmon. Best tasting salmon evah! Some slight details in what I do:

1) I have the salmon on a raised grill shelf, on the assumption that since smoke rises, it will get a better dose of it.

2) Place aluminum foil on the gas grill except for under the smoker tube, which needs air from below for burning. More smoke should be trapped above the foil where the fish is, which is where it's needed.

3) In my Genesis II, I place the smoker tube forward next to the grill cover's opening and the salmon toward the back, because the smoke vents out toward the bottom back of the grill cover. Again, the assumption is more smoke will pass the salmon's way.
 
Chud used the device asked about by the OP, says he's gonna do a vid about it soon , vid should start at the point referenced

 
Yep. The Big Chief and Little Chief are the ticket for most cold smoking. You can still pick either one up for around $100 if you watch Amazon for sales. Add wood chips or pellets to the pan, plug it in and you're smoking in ~15 minutes (longer to get pellets going). They run at about 165 degrees F when the ambient temperature is in the low to mid 70s. To run it cooler for cheese, just lean the front cover up against the front, leaving a couple inch gap at the top and put the cheese on the top 2 shelves.
During the harvest season, I leave out the wood and use mine as a dehydrator too. Great to keep the heat outside instead of in the kitchen with the regular dehydrator.
If you have the top loading model you take out the rack put the smoker lid back on and place the rack on the the lid and then cover with the original box or another box. The smoke drifts up from the hotplate and escapes through the lid vents and into the box covered rack. You get extremely reduced smoking temperatures this way. I've done it this way for a long time, so much so that the box is a splendid golden color. You could also use one if those maze smoke generators without heating the hotplate as another coldsmoke option.
 
If you have the top loading model you take out the rack put the smoker lid back on and place the rack on the the lid and then cover with the original box or another box. The smoke drifts up from the hotplate and escapes through the lid vents and into the box covered rack. You get extremely reduced smoking temperatures this way. I've done it this way for a long time, so much so that the box is a splendid golden color. You could also use one if those maze smoke generators without heating the hotplate as another coldsmoke option.
I read about people doing that when I decided to get a Big Chief, but the front loader just seemed much easier to deal with overall. It's especially easy to rotate the shelves when smoking a load of jerky or fish. I've got a smoke tube I could use but get good results with cheese in less than an hour the way I've been doing it.
Either way, they're great smokers/dehydrators.
 
Today was the first time using my smoke generator except in a couple of very short trial runs. I started by dragging a 3 burner Genny I haven’t got around to rehabbing yet out of the boneyard last week and prepped it up for the Smokai. After a week of curing, I ran a 3lb slab of Bacon for about 2 hours. I did have a little trouble keeping things lit and it’s probably my own fault for buying chips that were just too fine. It was more like a coarse sawdust than chips. I did wind up using some heat instead of a true cold smoke for the project as well0C77D2EE-CBD7-4001-A3A7-56E415012A4D.jpeg0D0EA0F3-7411-44DC-AE4B-40B178FC957A.jpegDE95418A-74AF-4C98-9AE8-171335059F36.jpeg. I used the front burner on it’s lowest setting and kept the bacon to the very back. Temps under the lid maxed out at about 190 at the front. I pulled the bacon at an internal temp of 130 and immediately bagged it under a layer of ice to settle it quickly. All in all, it went well and looks good. My next move will be an attempt at sausage. In the meantime, I wanted to check back here and give thanks for the help. I was lacking confidence in a big way coming into this project, but a dose of guidance and direction from the good folks here at tvwbb helped to get me up and over that hill. Thanks once again for the help.
 
Today was the first time using my smoke generator except in a couple of very short trial runs. I started by dragging a 3 burner Genny I haven’t got around to rehabbing yet out of the boneyard last week and prepped it up for the Smokai. After a week of curing, I ran a 3lb slab of Bacon for about 2 hours. I did have a little trouble keeping things lit and it’s probably my own fault for buying chips that were just too fine. It was more like a coarse sawdust than chips. I did wind up using some heat instead of a true cold smoke for the project as wellView attachment 46710View attachment 46712View attachment 46715. I used the front burner on it’s lowest setting and kept the bacon to the very back. Temps under the lid maxed out at about 190 at the front. I pulled the bacon at an internal temp of 130 and immediately bagged it under a layer of ice to settle it quickly. All in all, it went well and looks good. My next move will be an attempt at sausage. In the meantime, I wanted to check back here and give thanks for the help. I was lacking confidence in a big way coming into this project, but a dose of guidance and direction from the good folks here at tvwbb helped to get me up and over that hill. Thanks once again for the help.
Can you please post a pic or two showing how you mounted this?
 
Can you please post a pic or two showing how you mounted this?
The mounting is a bit of a sad and ugly story, but since you asked....

I started by purchasing the mount with the Smokai that allow you to slide it right onto a Weber rotisserie bracket and thought that would be the end of it. Wrong. It slid on perfectly but left the smoke tube a 1/2” away from the outside of the cook box so I scrapped that idea and bolted it directly to the firebox with some stainless hardware from the garage. The bolts are way too long so I had to stack nuts but it’s what I had on hand on and saved myself a trip to the hardware store in the process. I then had to ream out the rotisserie slot to a 1” hole size to fit the smoke tube. It was quick and easy with a step drill but I would guess that most people aren’t going to want to drill out their grill. For me, it was just a matter of grabbing one from the yet to be rehabbed pile. I left a gap for the lid to have clearance when closing. In hindsight, I probably could’ve saved the effort and bolted it up tight to the tub and been just fine for clearance as well. I’m going to try that for my next smoke. The only other thing I did was remove the thermoset side table while smoking. The fine chips allowed some hot embers to fall from the burn holes on each side. I didn’t want to risk damaging the table and I think more appropriately sized chips or pellets would eliminate this problem going forward. I’ve attached the one and only picture I have that shows my ugly and very impromptu mounting method. Hope it helps.
E98B519D-4B68-4F16-934B-36FEEDE0EB4A.jpeg
 
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