My Cold-smoke setup

I retrofitted my Cookshack to coldsmoke instead of buying the baffle. I don’t like the idea of climbing temps. So mine solution seems a little different so I thought I would post. I wanted a solution not so hokey or kluged like other posts I have seen here.

I did try putting the 12inck A-maze-N pellet device inside my SM025 but I found that this would raise the temperature too quickly in the chamber (without baffle). My experience showed to be about one degree temp change about every minute or minute in a half. With baffle it would still rise just not as fast. Bottom line is if I start a cold smoke at 60 deg outside temp it only took about 15min for the temp to move to 70 and not long after 75deg which I don’t want to exceed for cheese smokes. Some cheeses start to sweat, loose oils, which changes the consistency of the cheese. This poked me into what I could do on the relative cheap to improve conditions.

The internet sells these mini-galvanized trash cans pretty cheap but me not wanting to wait the Ace hardware down the street sells the same. Mine is a 10gal and cost $25. Then I bought 5 feet of aluminum gas line with diameter slightly larger than the internal diameter of the Cookshack exit vent. The Cookshack exit vent can be screwed apart and removed where the top part is only a 1/2 inch galvanized tube where the smoke exits the smoker.

So what you have to buy is a tiny length of threaded 1/2 inch galvanized pipe and a gas line transition to 5/8in. This screws into the Cookshack nut that typically acts as the holding nut on the inside vent of the smoker. Then the opposite side clamps down to the Cookshack by a 1/2in to 5/8in gas-line adapter. Well, slightly more tricky than this because I had to insert some PCV with washers over the 1/2in pipe so when I tightened the fitting it pinched against the Cookshack ceiling wall.

From here, you by 60in of 5/8 diameter aluminum flexible gas line we all use for our cloths dryers. Mine came painted yellow. This screws to your new vent on the Cookshack. And of course the opposite end of the 5/8ths line runs to your galvanized can smoking chamber. Anyway, I choose this setup because it maintained the original diameter of the original Cookshack 1/2in pipe all the way to the galvanized cooking can.

Anyway, a hole gets screwed at the bottom of the can to attach the flexible gas-line, and a hole the same diameter as the interior flexible gas-line pipe. Done forget to buy the pass-threw to secure the flex line to the can, then drill a hole in the can-cover, same diameter as the internal of the flex-line and viola, you are done !

What is nice about this setup is the aluminum flex-line and the galvanized can are usually colder then the ambient temp so the smoke gets a cooling effect once leaving the Cookshack. I have measured the temp of the smoking chamber air to be 1/2 to 1 degree cooler than outside air. Great !

The things I have had to play with are
1) The A-maze-N smoker tube tends to go out after about an hour and I don’t know why. I cant tell if it is a lack of O2? Maybe I just suck at getting the thing lit? I don’t know. Yes, I give it about 10min of flame before blowing it out.
2) I also have tried a fish tank pump where a rubber surgeons glove is used to seal the air-line around the bottom hole. I did this because I found the smoke was exiting the bottom hole and it seemed the flow of smoke from the galvanized can was fairly light. The fish tank pump does not seem to make any impact.

So the system works, but could be better. I found a post from a guy saying very modest smoke flow is better than higher flows so maybe I should just leave it?