Clean smoke clarification

[forestchunks]

How's everyone doing. Me and my girlfriend just finished building our reverse flow smoker. Did my first cook last weekend and was having a hard time maintaining a good fire with clean smoke. It was mostly heavy white. Looked into it and figured out I needed a good coal bed so fixed that problem. Towards the end of the cook I was getting much cleaner smoke. Some of that thin blue smoke that everyone talks about but I also hit a point where there was no smoke at all just the heat waves out of the stack while maintaining temps. Now is that what I'm shooting for or will that not provide me with the smoke flavor I'm looking for. I'll be doing another cook this weekend so any help be greatly appreciated. Thanks

 

[tropics]

As long as you can smell smoke,it is smoking real clean.
Richie

 

[sqwib]

but I also hit a point where there was no smoke at all just the heat waves out of the stack while maintaining temps. Now is that what I'm shooting for ...

Absolutely Love your build, color is the same as Frank
When I'm running my pit, I shoot for no visible smoke at all.
As far as I'm concerned pits shouldn't even be referred to as smokers, to me it is Offset Cooking, some purist will even preburn wood to coals before cooking on their pit... me... I just try to keep it from smoking at all.
If I want to smoke something, I toss it on my GOSM

 

[forestchunks]

Absolutely Love your build, color is the same as Frank
When I'm running my pit, I shoot for no visible smoke at all.
As far as I'm concerned pits shouldn't even be referred to as smokers, to me it is Offset Cooking, some purist will even preburn wood to coals before cooking on their pit... me... I just try to keep it from smoking at all.
If I want to smoke something, I toss it on my GOSM

Thank you. It was definitely a fun experience building this tank. We only had 2 issues. I found out I have a leak somewhere in the rf plate that I have to find and the other is the grate was made a little to seperated so it wasn't holding coals. It would just drop into the ash tray so I picked up left over expanded metal that I'm going to lay on top. Should be much better but over all temps are exactly the same from end to end. Couldn' be happier. Dang it. Looks like I'm gonna have to do another cook this weekend :);)

 

[sqwib]

Keep us posted and don't MELT the playhouse!

 

[JckDanls 07]

Also ... If you don't already... put splits on top of the firebox to preheat... this will help them ignite faster when thrown in the fire... I will leave my door open for a minute or two when new splits are added so they will ignite faster thus reducing the amount of white smoke ...

 

[forestchunks]

Also ... If you don't already... put splits on top of the firebox to preheat... this will help them ignite faster when thrown in the fire... I will leave my door open for a minute or two when new splits are added so they will ignite faster thus reducing the amount of white smoke ...

I was doing that but I had seen someone put a split inside the fb not touching the fire. I tried that and it worked out pretty good. It was far enough from the flames to not ignite the split but it dried out the wood and pre warmed it really good. Within seconds of placing over the fire it would ignite. But yes thanks for the the advice. This community is awesome!

 

[JckDanls 07]

The reason they put the split off to the side is for smoke... normally that split is of a different species than what's being used for the fire... I could be confused about this but I don't recall reading about it the way you described .. but if that works for you then that's what you do... It's all about what works best for your application.. any info posted is just to see what would work best in your case...

 

[forestchunks]

Interesting. I was honestly just trying everything. There's a lot for me to learn and figure out what works best and how this smoker runs. I'll be doing another cook this weekend so I'll let you guys know if It worked out any better