Vertical Chambers attached to smokers

[wojo]

Good Morning!

     I am new to the site and am looking to purchase a smoker within the next couple of weeks. I have been toying around with the idea of getting a smoker with a vertical chamber at the end for cooking (i.e. lyfetyme pit). Though my main cooks in the beginning will be cooking ribs, and brisket. I would like to smoke fish as well as chicken. Does anyone in this forum own a pit with a vertical chamber at the end of their offset smoker?

If so, what different ways do you utilize the space within the smoker? What cooking processes are used in the vertical chamber? are they worth purchasing? or should i stick with using a basic horizontal smoker starting out?

Thank you,

 

[daveomak]

wojo, morning.....   How many folks are you cooking for 90% of the time....  That's what target should be...   Both vert. and horz. parts of the smoker produce food that is basically the same...   The vert. will cook at a lower temp. by maybe 15 deg. or so...   but if only the horz. has meat in it, doesn't matter...   

I read they are 1/4" material.... that's very good...  Don't forget to consider firewood...  if it's free, that's good...   you don't want to be buying wood from Home Depot...   Size matters when it comes to fuel costs and serving a group of folks...   Where I live, a cord of wood costs $125...  or free if your neighbor own an orchard where I can get apple, pear, cherry for nothing..

 

[wojo]

Dave,

 The most i may be cooking for at one given time would not exceed 50 people. and fuel is not a problem. There is plenty of oak, maple, and apple in my neck of the woods.

I just had some little concerns on whether or not it would be worth my time to invest in a smoker with a vertical chamber attached. At some point i would like to get into a little bit of cold smoking. However, in the near future it would only be for poultry, brisket, ribs, etc.

Does your smoker have a vertical chamber attached? 

 

[daveomak]

No vertical chamber here..... 

For cold smoking, all you need is an AMNPS and a cardboard box.....  You smoke stuff, generally, below 70 deg. F....

AMNPS inside a mail box, for smoke generation....   http://www.amazenproducts.com/
[h1]Cold Smoking[/h1]
Cold smoking at 52-71° F (12-22° C), from 1-14 days, applying thin smoke with occasional breaks in between, is one of the oldest preservation methods. We cannot produce cold smoke if the outside temperature is 90° F (32° C), unless we can cool it down, which is what some industrial smokers do. Cold smoking is a drying process whose purpose is to remove moisture thus preserving a product.

You will find that different sources provide different temperatures for cold smoking. In European countries where most of the cold smoking is done, the upper temperature is accepted as 86° F (30° C). The majority of Russian, Polish and German meat technology books call for 71° F (22° C), some books ask for 77° F (25° C). Fish starts to cook at 85° F (29.4° C) and if you want to make delicious cold smoked salmon that is smoked for a long time, obviously you can not exceed 86° F (30° C). Cold smoking assures us of total smoke penetration inside of the meat. The loss of moisture also is uniform in all areas and the total weight loss falls within 5-20% depending largely on the smoking time. Cold smoking is not a continuous process, it is stopped (no smoke) a few times to allow fresh air into the smoker.

PelletsinMB mod.jpg

• daveomak
• Mar 28, 2016

 .....