The smoking bullet on it's first test run

Today I finally tested the cold smoking box I’ve been building. The smoker is about 6″ high, built from pine on the inside and cedar on the outside. The box sits on a concrete block foundation to keep it dry and has a shingle roof.

Smoke is generated by a smoking bullet, fixed to the outside of the box. Air is pushed into the bullet by an aquarium air pump. The smoke is only very slightly warm when entering the smoke chamber. In today’s two hour test run there was no measurable temperature increase in the smoke box.

I had thought about insulating the box – there’s 2″ of space between the inner box and the outside siding, but then I decided against it. After all, it’s a cold smoker, I want it to be cold and come fall, the ambient temperature is supposed to keep the goods from spoiling during the smoking process.

I built the entire box from pine boards, with the result that there were a number of gaps where boards were not butting up perfectly. To make sure that no smoke was leaking I covered the outside with construction paper, completely sealing the smoking box.

Smoking box on the left, storage on the right.

Here’s a shot of the finished box. The smoking box is larger enough for anything I would want to smoke – sausages, fish, even an entire pig’s leg will fit without problems. With a heater installed the box can also be used as a drying box, for everything from biltong to tomatoes.

A simple thermostat connected to an electric fan heater should do the trick just fine. The box isn’t airtight, although there’s remarkably little smoke leakage, so running a fan should not be an issue.

For today’s test run I put a bowl of kosher salt into the smoker, shaking it a couple of times to make sure that the smoke had a time to adhere to all the salt. It smells wonderful, can’t wait to use it.