So 12 days ago I started curing 10lb of pork belly/side meat using the handy calculator found over on diggingdog and at the time wasn't really sure if i was going to hot or cold smoke it and finally decided on the cold method. Since my two smokers were an ancient electric smoker made of sheet metal and my UDS, i had to come up with a solution to make cold smoke. I initially looked at those perforated metal tubes for pellets which seem to work great, so as usual i did the opposite and came up with a venturi setup based on some other designs i found out there.
I started with a empty 1lb propane cylinder which i removed the valves, filled with water (to make sure completely empty), drained, and cut open. This was to be the pellet holder where i put some steel mesh 2" from the bottom to keep an air gap under the pellets. The air comes from a 4w aquarium pump which goes through a 6" thin steel tube, and the opening is about 3" past the Brass T threaded into the top of the cylinder. I then added some copper pipe with a T about half way down which feeds condensate into a glass container. I tested it out yesterday without the drip bottle and the smoke was just about perfect and after 4 hours there was a mess on the brick patio. That seems to be fixed with the bottle in place now. Here are some pics. The PID is just to monitor the temp inside the UDS since the PT100 thermocouple is pretty accurate.
I started smoking the bacon about 2 hours ago and the amount of smoke seems to be pretty good. It's a combination of Apple pellets and some hickory "splinters" i made by taking a fist size chunk of the wood and smashing it in a shop press i have. Not sure what inspired the idea, but it worked. Ill post up how the bacon looks in the morning. I'm not sure how many total hours i should smoke it for. I've seen opinions ranging anywhere from 8 hours to 30+ hours.
I started with a empty 1lb propane cylinder which i removed the valves, filled with water (to make sure completely empty), drained, and cut open. This was to be the pellet holder where i put some steel mesh 2" from the bottom to keep an air gap under the pellets. The air comes from a 4w aquarium pump which goes through a 6" thin steel tube, and the opening is about 3" past the Brass T threaded into the top of the cylinder. I then added some copper pipe with a T about half way down which feeds condensate into a glass container. I tested it out yesterday without the drip bottle and the smoke was just about perfect and after 4 hours there was a mess on the brick patio. That seems to be fixed with the bottle in place now. Here are some pics. The PID is just to monitor the temp inside the UDS since the PT100 thermocouple is pretty accurate.
I started smoking the bacon about 2 hours ago and the amount of smoke seems to be pretty good. It's a combination of Apple pellets and some hickory "splinters" i made by taking a fist size chunk of the wood and smashing it in a shop press i have. Not sure what inspired the idea, but it worked. Ill post up how the bacon looks in the morning. I'm not sure how many total hours i should smoke it for. I've seen opinions ranging anywhere from 8 hours to 30+ hours.