I tried to smoke some cheese about a month ago in my behemoth of a vertical smoker. At the time it was about 10 degrees F out and I was using the 12 inch amazin tube smoker. I loaded it up and got the pellets good and hot and then went back to the game. A couple hours later I went to check on the cheese and found that the pellets died shortly after I walked away. I thought it was weird and fired them back up.
I got distracted by the game again and checked on them a couple hours later. They had died again... This time I realized that there was no draft through the smoker to keep them lit, so being a problem solver, I propped up a box fan in front of the firebox and forced some air through it. Heh, Brilliant! By now it was starting to get dark and I decided to give it another couple hours. When I came out to check on them again there was a 3 inch flame coming out of the pellets. Whoops, too much air (or maybe beer at this point)...
I figured that the cheese was getting no smoke from pellets happily burning instead of smoldering, so I moved the fan a ways back and filled the tube back up. This time I checked every 15 minutes and kept a decent smoke going for about an hour until the cheese had some color. Being single digits for most of the smoke and a ton of air blowing by the cheese, they were all dried out and cracked. Smelled good and looked like a decent smokey color though... I vac-sealed them and waited a couple weeks to bust into one and see how bad I screwed up. That was a couple weeks ago.
The medium cheddar was really really smokey. Almost to the point where it was bad. My oldest loved it, but my youngest swore that he should be exhaling smoke after each bite. The pepperjack was amazing though. No where near the smokiness of the cheddar. I'm about to bust into another block of each and see how a couple more weeks of aging has done to them. Hopefully the cheddar is more mellow.
Will probably do another batch here and try to keep things proper instead of getting distracted by the boob tube. Will take pics of the next one too =)
I got distracted by the game again and checked on them a couple hours later. They had died again... This time I realized that there was no draft through the smoker to keep them lit, so being a problem solver, I propped up a box fan in front of the firebox and forced some air through it. Heh, Brilliant! By now it was starting to get dark and I decided to give it another couple hours. When I came out to check on them again there was a 3 inch flame coming out of the pellets. Whoops, too much air (or maybe beer at this point)...
I figured that the cheese was getting no smoke from pellets happily burning instead of smoldering, so I moved the fan a ways back and filled the tube back up. This time I checked every 15 minutes and kept a decent smoke going for about an hour until the cheese had some color. Being single digits for most of the smoke and a ton of air blowing by the cheese, they were all dried out and cracked. Smelled good and looked like a decent smokey color though... I vac-sealed them and waited a couple weeks to bust into one and see how bad I screwed up. That was a couple weeks ago.
The medium cheddar was really really smokey. Almost to the point where it was bad. My oldest loved it, but my youngest swore that he should be exhaling smoke after each bite. The pepperjack was amazing though. No where near the smokiness of the cheddar. I'm about to bust into another block of each and see how a couple more weeks of aging has done to them. Hopefully the cheddar is more mellow.
Will probably do another batch here and try to keep things proper instead of getting distracted by the boob tube. Will take pics of the next one too =)