# Cleanliness Is Next To Godliness ... But Does It Taste Good?



## johnmeyer (Jan 24, 2018)

Before I got my AMNPS, and before I created my Mailbox (Popcorn) Mod, I got some really awful results with my MES 30 smoker. It was so bad that two years ago I created a post, Thinking of selling my MES 30 where I talked about the lip-numbing results I got from all the creosote that the MES created.

After I got the AMNPS and especially after I started creating and scrubbing the smoke externally, my results improved dramatically.

But, the other day, as I preheated the smoker, I noticed that, before I added any food and before I attached my external smoker mod, I was seeing as much smoke coming out of the MES exhaust port as I would see in the middle of the smoke. I realized that this was coming from all that black stuff that had accumulated from 2+ years of smoking, the first portion of which was when I was creating bad smoke.

Since the smoke I was seeing during preheat was coming from this coating of old stuff, could I still be getting some residual "bad stuff" in my food? Could I get a better taste by cleaning my smoker?

This has been preying on my mind long before I saw this preheat smoke, but when I saw that, I finally decided to roll up my sleeves and clean the smoker. It took 5+ hours and, because my glove broke without my realizing it, I have black fingers that four days later haven't turned flesh color again. I got it pretty clean, as you can see here (this was taken after I did my first smoke after the cleaning, so it looked better than this immediately after the cleaning):








[I apologize for this rotated pic, but this forum's software is so screwed up that it rotates images that weren't initially rotated. I wasted fifteen minutes of my life trying to find a way, in this forum, to get the image to display correctly. I gave up].

My initial smoke, using almonds, was promising. I got a very clean-tasting, pleasant smoke. I'll report back as I continue to use this clean smoker as to whether cleanliness really makes for a better smoke (assuming that the existing gunk contained a lot of creosote), or whether it doesn't really matter.


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## Rings Я Us (Jan 24, 2018)




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## johnmeyer (Jan 24, 2018)

Rings Я Us said:


> View attachment 351414


Thanks for the rotated pic, but how does that help me rotate it myself for my own posts??


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## Rings Я Us (Jan 24, 2018)

The computer couldn't recognize it and probably messed with it.  Try another one different


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## PerazziMx14 (Jan 24, 2018)

Please delete


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## Rings Я Us (Jan 24, 2018)

Car wash do it yourself spray with engine degreaser then rinse. :D


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## johnmeyer (Jan 24, 2018)

I used the following, none of which did what you describe, but all of which should have worked:

BBQ degreaser/cleaner
Simple Green
Simple Green HD (totally different product)
Isoproply Alcohol (91%)
TSP (the real stuff), _very _high strength dilution.

In the end I had to get most of it off with a razor blade. I'll certainly look into the other two cleaners. The product safety sheet for "Purple Power" shows that the active ingredient is Diethylene glycol monobutyl ether. I found a great page on the web which shows which products use this solvent:

Household Products Database

One of the first products listed is EASY-OFF Fume Free Max Oven Cleaner. That sounds like what I needed. So, next time, Purple Power is what I'll try. 

Thanks!!


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## johnmeyer (Jan 24, 2018)

Rings Я Us said:


> The computer couldn't recognize it and probably messed with it.  Try another one different


My son is a programmer for Google and helped my daughter with a picture, on another site, that also insisted on being rotated, even though it displayed correctly on her computer before uploading. He diagnosed the problem as being the website's bad programming, and not a fault in the photo itself. So, I think that the forum engineers need to look at this.

Also, as I said before, it isn't really helpful to tell me to try a different one, because THIS is the photo I wanted to upload. As I said in the bug report I posted in the subforum, I cannot access any of the editing tools on this site, which used to be available to me.

Finally, I am in the software business and have run three software companies, including one that made photo editing software that was higher end that Photoshop. Not to toot my own horn or sound arrogant (which is how I sometimes come off), but I sort of understand how this stuff works ...


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## Rings Я Us (Jan 24, 2018)

So you say that this pic somehow is a fluke.  That's a good thing I guess. And like I said, the site has a system to check for unwanted material or recognizes things that are copyrighted and in the checks and balances that are in place, some glitch may cause a pic to be left in a rotated form as it goes through the processes.. I hope it doesn't happen often. I have sent hundreds. Never a problem yet.  Just using my phone here..


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## normanaj (Jan 24, 2018)

> BBQ degreaser/cleaner
> Simple Green
> Simple Green HD (totally different product)
> Isoproply Alcohol (91%)
> TSP (the real stuff), _very _high strength dilution.



That's a whole lot of poison.Greased Lightning and a thorough rinse with vinegar/water.


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## johnmeyer (Jan 24, 2018)

normanaj said:


> That's a whole lot of poison.Greased Lightning and a thorough rinse with vinegar/water.


The last two are actually pretty tame compared to many cleaning agents. Isopropyl alcohol may be poisonous to consume, but you actually can buy the stuff in a pharmacy for topical application ("rubbing alcohol"). I think it is pretty environmentally friendly, since various alcohols are naturally occurring, and the stuff evaporates.

TSP (trisodium phosphate) is actually used as a food additive (in very dilute quantities), so it too is about as safe as a cleaning agent can be. However, when released into the environment it can cause problems if allowed to get into lakes and streams, not because it poisons anything, but instead for the exact opposite reason: the phosphate in TSP acts as a fertilizer and, when it gets into lakes and streams, causes massive algae blooms and plant growth which can dramatically alter the ecology of the body of water ("eutrophication" is the fancy term for this problem). So, if you use the stuff, you have to make sure that your sewer or septic system doesn't feed directly into any lakes and streams.

I know less about the other chemicals and perhaps the "green" part of their names is just a marketing lie.

[edit]I looked up Simple Green (one of the products I used) and then, using the same site that rates the environmental issues with cleaning products, I entered the active ingredient in Greased Lightning. Here is a link to the results:

Simple Green

Greased Lightning

I don't see any real differences and, according to this one site (obviously not the gospel), Greased Lightning may actually be worse.

But who knows ...


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## johnmeyer (Jan 24, 2018)

Rings Я Us said:


> So you say that this pic somehow is a fluke.  That's a good thing I guess. And like I said, the site has a system to check for unwanted material or recognizes things that are copyrighted and in the checks and balances that are in place, some glitch may cause a pic to be left in a rotated form as it goes through the processes.. I hope it doesn't happen often. I have sent hundreds. Never a problem yet.  Just using my phone here..


No, this is NOT a fluke, and I neither said nor implied any such thing. (Sorry that may sound a little snarky, but I do want to be clear on what I said and didn't say). 

Also, the problem has absolutely nothing to do with copyrighted material. It is simply a pic that I took with my Panasonic Lumix camera, edited in Photoimpact, and uploaded, just like I've done thousands and thousands of time at other sites, without any issues. 

I'm not trying to be difficult, but I do want to make sure that whomever is responsible for this site's operation doesn't ignore this because they think it is a non-problem. It IS a problem, and other people will definitely have it. I can provide full technical details of why it happens and what must be done to correct the problem. The starting point for the technical explanation is the JPEG rotation flag. This flag permits JPEG images to be rotated 90 degrees in either direction, or 180 degrees, _without any re-encoding or other alteration of the actual picture data. _It is a pretty cool feature built into a standard created long before the WWW was created.

For a quick primer on the subject, click here:

Why Your Photos Don’t Always Appear Correctly Rotated


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## Rings Я Us (Jan 24, 2018)

Hmm.. I don't know.. I never had a computer or laptop in my life. Nor have I used one.
I only have used phones and I know this site and how it all works using my chrome android phone . :) I have seen many times people on social media have their picture sideways and they don't know how or why it happened.. I only know I have sent thousands of pictures , to social sites and here ,with not one glitch by using phones since 2006.


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## smokeymose (Jan 24, 2018)

I just brush off the "loose" flaky smoke buildup stuff, either in the offset or the MB/mailbox before the cook so it doesn't fall on the the food.
Other than that, 
meh..


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## johnmeyer (Jan 24, 2018)

Rings Я Us said:


> Hmm.. I don't know.. I never had a computer or laptop in my life. Nor have I used one.
> I only have used phones and I know this site and how it all works using my chrome android phone . :) I have seen many times people on social media have their picture sideways and they don't know how or why it happened.. I only know I have sent thousands of pictures , to social sites and here ,with not one glitch by using phones since 2006.


I give up. I have lost interest in my own thread.


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## Rings Я Us (Jan 24, 2018)

Lol..


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## gmc2003 (Jan 25, 2018)

John, your photo software(either your camera's or external software) may be to advanced for the code running this site. Maybe the site doesn't recognize your rotation tags. Don't worry about sounding "Snarky". I am and work with allot of engineer's that come across that way. I think there's a no grey area class that's required in the freshmen year. 

Chris.


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## SonnyE (Jan 27, 2018)

johnmeyer said:


> I give up. I have lost interest in my own thread.



Don't give up John.
I just laid down on my desk and all was right with the world......

(And the nap was appreciated, too.) ;)


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## bmudd14474 (Feb 1, 2018)

johnmeyer
 can you email me the picture you uploaded so I can do some testing to see if I can figure out why it rotated? ill pm you my address

Thanks


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## SonnyE (Feb 1, 2018)

johnmeyer said:


> One of the first products listed is EASY-OFF Fume Free Max Oven Cleaner.



I use Easy Off oven cleaner on my 10" tablesaw blades. Works like a charm to clean resins and gunk off. Makes all the difference in the world.


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## Fueling Around (Aug 15, 2019)

Sorry for late reply


 johnmeyer
 referenced this thread in a recent post.

Don't know if this has been brought up in cleaning discussions.

Easy-Off (any formula) is a sodium hydroxide (caustic soda or lye) based cleaner.
Besides doing a number (fantastic dissolver) on fat and meat (both protein based), lye is extremely destructive to aluminum.

Don't know most smoker materials, but my Big Chief is 75% aluminum.

TSP can react with aluminum, but generally OK as long you don't get it hot. 
DO NOT use TSP around glass.


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