Building an Outdoor Smoker

GASoline71

GASoline71

'cause chicks dig scars
Joined
Nov 13, 2005
Messages
3,594
Location
The Great Pacific Northwest
Soon I'm going to jump in and build a small "smoke shack" to mainly do salmon and steelhead. But will see the occasional round of smoked sausage, and other game meats. Hell, maybe even a rack of ribs or a brisket once in awhile. :)

Just curious to see if anybody here has built one of their own. Cold smoke, or hot smoke... just looking for idears.

Gary
 
Years ago lots of people used to use an old fridge. My bud wanted to make one but we had no old fridge. I used an old electric stove. Blew some holes in the bottom of the oven with a chisel and built a fire in the pot and pan drawer. You could regulate the fire by opening and closing the drawer. A bit crude but worked in a pinch.

You can dry stack concrete blocks and then skim coat them with a compound. Pretty quick and easy.
 
I made a smoker out of a 275 gallon fuel tank cut in half, put a grate in it and had a wood stove feed into the bottom of one end and a stack at the other. we smoked quite a few whole pigs on that sucker and it worked great. Cannt remember what happened to it....
 
We had a cold smoker growing up, 10 or 12 feet tall and maybe 4 foot square. Racks didn't start till 4 -4.5 feet off the ground. I want to build another but in the mean time I use my char griller. UDS out of 55 gallon drums are supposed to be sweet, or that ridiculously expensive green egg
 
I have a smokehouse I can walk in. Built out of wood. Its a hot smoker. Not too hot if I can avoid it.

In high school we built one in an embankment. Small bank in someones backyard. Built a firebox at the base of the bank. Piped straight into the bank 5 feet, and 90'd up 5 feet into a smokehouse on top of the bank. The ground around the pipe cooled the smoke a lot so with a thermometer in the smokehouse, we discovered quickly that preventing overheating was a breeze. Ypou actually had to make an effort to get it too warm in there.
 
sotc said:
We had a cold smoker growing up, 10 or 12 feet tall and maybe 4 foot square. Racks didn't start till 4 -4.5 feet off the ground. I want to build another but in the mean time I use my char griller. UDS out of 55 gallon drums are supposed to be sweet, or that ridiculously expensive green egg
Click to expand...

Those big green eggs suck. I got one as a christmas present a few years ago and I hate it. I can't get rid of it because my mom gave it to me.
 
Growing up my dad and a buddy both built them out of cement blocks. Hung every thing from the rafters and built the smudge fire in the middle of the dirt floor. Dad's was 6'x'6, Bill's you could store a snowmobile in so maybe like 8'x10'.

Had one that was a double barrel stove. Top barrel 12" above the lower one. mesh racks slide in to hold fish or sausage. You could cold or hot smoke in it just by how big a fire you built.

Built a wood one out of T11 siding sheets 4'x4'x6'. The fire box was on the outside so you could cold smoke with it by adding a longer chimney pipe to the fire box. Used that one for mainly sausage, so it was set for every thing to hang. I also had that fire box set up with propane so it was easier to keep fired at a lower setting.
 
I smoke stuff in my wood stove in my trailer. Just bend a a little cooking rack to keep the meat off the bottom. waaalaaa, but I can only fit three or so pieces of meat in there.
 
I'm big on smoking in my wood stove as well, welded some blocks in for a rack to sit on. Quick and very tasty meals. I have never cold smoked, but I think another good thing about it is that you can do cheese. I can hot smoke processed cheese in my stove at a low temp, but real cheese just melts with any heat. Still, smoked processed cheese is quite good. Some fish farmed trout that is raised nearby. I don't know what they feed the fish, but they get huge. It makes a great gift, people love it. A proper walk in smoker would be real cool to have. I guess cherry wood is what I like to use most, sometimes oak, or whatever is burning. :/:
 

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I need to make some sort of cold smoker. Id like to do cheeses. My walk in, old school style smoker is a little bit of a battle to keep the temps down. Its not horrible, but I have to be mindful of it. I ruined an entire deer worth of jerky this year. Went on an old time recipe we use in my family and my uncle gave me the wrong measurements on brown sugar and kosher salt. It tastes like smoked meat, and not much else. I felt horrible about it. Really did. I was giving some to the dogs, as not to waste it, but even the messed up version of it is a bit high in salt content for them. A piece or two isn't bad, but more then that is harsh on their system.
 
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I like the idear of the "walk in" and brick/stone/block smokehouses. But I need something in a lot smaller scale. I am going to build it out of cedar planks, and attach it to a metal frame on the bottom to elevate it. I would like to set it up to cold smoke and hot smoke. Dimensions will be around 4' wide x 4' deep x 6' tall.

Gary
 
My now deceased iron worker buddy used to smoke fish with an electric skillet and a new galvanized metal garbage can .

He made a rack to hang the fish and used hickory chips in the skillet .I guess it worked great but I never tried the fish because quit frankly I don't care for smoked fish .
 
GASoline71 said:
I like the idear of the "walk in" and brick/stone/block smokehouses. But I need something in a lot smaller scale. I am going to build it out of cedar planks, and attach it to a metal frame on the bottom to elevate it. I would like to set it up to cold smoke and hot smoke. Dimensions will be around 4' wide x 4' deep x 6' tall.

Gary
Click to expand...
To make one multi functional you just need to be able to move the heat source. Closer for hot smoking and farther for cold smoking. Your dimensions are about the one I made out of brick, just food for thought, oh and they had a slate roof.
 
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