Smoking Cheese my Hack

[holehogg]

So might not quite be a hack but something that worked for me.

Frustrated with my cold smoke compressor setup for smoking cheese, I came up with a method yesterday that worked for me while I need to make my last redesign.

Used an empty baked bean tin that’s lid was completely removed and drilled 4 holes in the sidewall at the bottom of the can for breathers. I used a small inverted steel cap as a stand for the tin that was placed inside the ash catcher of my kettle.
Weber mesquite wood chips to fill the tin to just over the halfway mark. Lit the wood chips by heating them through the breather holes using a gas torch.
Placed the tin on the stand and put the ash catcher back in place on the kettle.
XR50 to monitor temps on the lower grate and upper grate and in hindsight should have also included a left to right temp comparison on each grate.

First thing was to do a dry run for 2 ½ hours to monitor behaviour.
Ambient temp at start was 75F with a slight breeze (wind factor a rarity in PE).
Bottom and top vents fully open.
The smoke escaping the top vent was very dense for the first +- 10 minutes and then a cleaner smoke for the rest of the time with an almost invisible smoke near the end of the 2 ½ hours.
The first 20 min the bottom grate thermometer ran at around 82F and then moved up to around 86F for a further 15 min before increasing to 94F where it seemed to settle and only periodically going slightly above and below the 94F.
The top grate measured between 37 - 40F lower than the bottom grate, mostly.
I had read either in the pit or the free side about placing ice blocks in a smoker to reduce CC temps and before starting the dry run I had place a medium sized bowl full of water in the deep freeze.
When the temps settled above the melting point of cheese (90F) it was time to add the ice bowl.
The water bowl had not frozen completely but had a thin layer of ice on top. The bowl was placed on the bottom grate just off centre. This assisted in lowering the temps to stabalise at around 82F until the end of the test.

By the time I got to smoking the cheese the ambient temp was 40F lower than the test run. Cleaned out tin and refilled with fresh wood chips and started the process over again. The water in the bowl was still cold so I did not remove it. The CC never went higher than 82F and hovered around 78F with a marginal difference between top and bottom grates.
By the end of the smoke the ambient temp was down to 64F and this obviously played a role.

Now the 2 week wait to test the product.
I also forgot how much more pronounced mesquite is than other woods having not used it in such a long while.
I’m still loafing with a few cook and equipment experiments in-between :-)

[texastweeter]

I use a pellet tube with fruit wood pellets. Works great.

[texastweeter]

can you receive shipments from the US? Particularly a small redneck town in East Texas?

[holehogg]

Customs only allow offset stick burners☺

[texastweeter]

sheeze

[JGo37]

That's a great setup. I too use a pellet tube, but it dawned on me just now that moving to the ash can and running it in the cold winter is going to give me some great cold smoked cheese. I use chunks of mesquite all the time, but on beef and sometimes pork ribs - you'll have to post if you thought the mesquite flavor was too strong. I use fruit-wood pellets.

[holehogg]

I used mesquite chips because it's all I had that was not in logs. I suspected it was going to be to strong after using, hence the comment above.

[IowaGirl]

Somebody asked about using corncob pellets rather than wood-based pellets for smoking. I saw some at my local farm supply store and have tried the corncob pellets off and on this summer when hot smoking meat -- ribs, chicken, etc. The smoke flavor is very light. Maybe cob smoke would be fine if smoking something like a ham or brisket for a long time, but a few hours of smoking with cob pellets doesn't provide enough smoke flavor for my tastes.

I haven't tried the cob pellets for cold smoking cheese yet, but I plan to give that a whirl this winter. Is corn (maize) grown around you, holehogg? You could use your can idea to smoke with the whole cobs.

[holehogg]

Corn Cob or "mielies" as we call them. I haven't used the cob for a smoke source. Must give it a try. I hope I haven't overdone the smoke on the cheese using mesquite.