Robert McGee
TVWBB Gold Member
Well, the weather temporarily let up a bit and I jumped on the opportunity to try out my newly acquired A-MAZ-EN Tube Smoke Generator. It snowed a bit last night but the temps were up into the forties today. Near perfect for my task at hand.
In anticipation of this, my wife and I had made a trip to Jungle Jims (a legendary, locally owned Mega Super Market) that carries upwards of 1500 different varieties of cheese. I had to restrain my self as there are only two of us at home (the kids are grown and out of the house). It is easy to buy too much, then have it eventually go bad before it is eaten.
Jungle Jims has an advantage over Costco in this respect, they offer a number of cheeses in relatively small packages. For this test, it was practical to use small packages.
I ended up getting several varieties of cheddar including our favorite, "Kerry Gold, Dubliner" white cheddar, along with Gouda, and Brie, etc..
My wife suggested cutting a slice from each, and labeling them on a plate for the refrigerator to use after the smoked cheese aged for a direct comparison. Cut from the same chunk of cheese it would be a valid test.
She also came up with the idea of drawing a rough diagram so that we wouldn't make a mistake as to which cheese was which after it was smoked. I thought both were excellent suggestions.
I had ordered a pound bag of Apple pellets for the initial smoke. If we like the Apple pellets we'll see what might be available locally (or re-order). The smoke generator is just a simple, stainless steel tube with LOTS of holes and a cap on each end. One cap has a large hole in it to fill the tube and light the pellets. I filled the generator within and inch of the top (as per the instructions). That was supposed to give me two hours of smoke. It did. I arbitrarily picked a two hour time frame as a first time. You can put fewer pellets in to reduce the time, or fill it again and run some more smoke. I bought the smallest size (6") and am glad I did. It seems perfect for the Mini-Joe and I believe will work well with the 18.5 should I need more cheese capacity.
I lit the generator, let it burn for ten minutes, by the clock, then blew it out. While burning, it hardly generated any smoke at all. That kind of bothered me, but when I blew it out, the smoke was PLENTY (the flame was pretty much consuming the smoke). It takes ten minutes for things to get started well, as per instructions.
Here is the cheese just before going on the smoker. You will note that I filled the grate and just carried it through the house on the grate.
In anticipation of this, my wife and I had made a trip to Jungle Jims (a legendary, locally owned Mega Super Market) that carries upwards of 1500 different varieties of cheese. I had to restrain my self as there are only two of us at home (the kids are grown and out of the house). It is easy to buy too much, then have it eventually go bad before it is eaten.
Jungle Jims has an advantage over Costco in this respect, they offer a number of cheeses in relatively small packages. For this test, it was practical to use small packages.
I ended up getting several varieties of cheddar including our favorite, "Kerry Gold, Dubliner" white cheddar, along with Gouda, and Brie, etc..
My wife suggested cutting a slice from each, and labeling them on a plate for the refrigerator to use after the smoked cheese aged for a direct comparison. Cut from the same chunk of cheese it would be a valid test.
She also came up with the idea of drawing a rough diagram so that we wouldn't make a mistake as to which cheese was which after it was smoked. I thought both were excellent suggestions.
I had ordered a pound bag of Apple pellets for the initial smoke. If we like the Apple pellets we'll see what might be available locally (or re-order). The smoke generator is just a simple, stainless steel tube with LOTS of holes and a cap on each end. One cap has a large hole in it to fill the tube and light the pellets. I filled the generator within and inch of the top (as per the instructions). That was supposed to give me two hours of smoke. It did. I arbitrarily picked a two hour time frame as a first time. You can put fewer pellets in to reduce the time, or fill it again and run some more smoke. I bought the smallest size (6") and am glad I did. It seems perfect for the Mini-Joe and I believe will work well with the 18.5 should I need more cheese capacity.
I lit the generator, let it burn for ten minutes, by the clock, then blew it out. While burning, it hardly generated any smoke at all. That kind of bothered me, but when I blew it out, the smoke was PLENTY (the flame was pretty much consuming the smoke). It takes ten minutes for things to get started well, as per instructions.
Here is the cheese just before going on the smoker. You will note that I filled the grate and just carried it through the house on the grate.
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