Wade

Great looking oven 

How long does it take to warm up before you start cooking the pizzas?

Hi Don - Welcome to the forum. Brewing and Smoking are good complimentary skills 

I often travel in the US too and taste as I go. A few places I have eaten have been good but most have been mediocre at best. I find that too many of the BBQ places there (even the highly recommended ones) rely too much on the flavour of their sauces and not enough on the flavour of the meat.

I think that now there are a lot of places in the UK that can hold their own with the best of those in the USA.

Thanks for posting that Nick. Good comparison and review 

Hi Andy

You cooked these in the UDS I assume. They sound great. As Steve says do you have any photos?

For me I prefer to cook my chicken a little hotter (300-320 F) as I find such a lean meat does not really benefit from low temperature smoking. It is all down to personal preference I think. It is good efficient use of the space in the UDS though 

Great looking turkey Jackie, thanks. There is a lot of interest from the American ex-pats  for these around Thanksgiving.

I burned out several coffee grinders over the course of 6 months before I took the plunge and went for a professional grinder. I talked to a friend in a local restaurant and he recommended the Waring CD409. It is a little pricey at ~£158 but has already saved me money over the 2 years I have had it.

Peppercorns are no match for it and it turns cinnamon sticks into dust in a matter of seconds.

Very nice smoker 

Hi Nick - welcome to the forum.

You are welcome here both on a personal level and professionally. It is amazing how many people are looking at more professional level smokers these days.

I bought my Cookshack FEC-120 from you a couple of years ago (as they were moving from the 120v to 240 v controller boards) and can confirm that it is a great workhorse smoker. 

The GMG pellet smokers are great too - even the Davy Crockett which I often use for baking. Steve (Smokin Monkey) has the larger GMG which he loves too.

I can sympathise with you regarding the domestic challenges of bringing home a new smoker. They do not seem to understand just how important it is to add to the diversity in the back garden 

What a great birthday present 

Btw - welcome to the forum.

On 26/08/2017 at 11:31 AM, Jason@HopSmokeFire said:

Jason Wood just joining. I have a Weber 57 but make as much use of its versatility as possible; pizza oven, hot smoking, cold smoking, grilling and barbecuing. 

I also have a small food blog hopsmokefire.com and am researching sustainability in the UK barbecue food industry for my MBA dissertation. 

Hi Jason and welcome to the forum. The Weber 57 is a great workhorse of smoker and is very versatile.

I took a look at your food blog and it looks great. I have updated your post with the hyperlink to make it easier for members to get there 

13 hours ago, Dodge said:

Just done my first smoke and been bitten by the bug!

Hi Dodge - Welcome to the forum. It can be an addictive hobby for sure . What did you smoke and what did you smoke it in?

Hi Rick - Welcome to the forum 

Having tried of many of my local butchers I now use Wilkes of Cranbrook as my primary source of meat. The small shop front does not do them justice as they provide meat for a large number of restaurants, pubs and local schools. With a little notice they will provide almost any cut of BBQ meat you want. I have used them now for several years and have never been disappointed. 

E C Wilkes and Son
Stone St
Cranbrook
Kent
N17 3HE

01580 713128

5 hours ago, Steve Harford said:

... So I will be slicing and packing most of it today then start another few for smoking when it's a bit cooler. Still tastes great though. 

Unless you are going to eat it all within a week (or freeze it) then it will keep longer in the fridge stored as a slab

Hi Steve

Unsliced, dry cure bacon will keep refrigerated for up to 6 weeks. Once it is sliced then you should eat it within a week. If you want to keep your bacon longer then you should freeze it.

The chilled shelf life of unsliced immersion cured or pump is only a week. 

The graph below shows typical water uptake for immersion cured bacon at  0, 7 and 14 days. 

For dry cured bacon there is a reduction in weight for both loin and belly as the salt/sugar draws out water from the meat.

Bacon is not all the same and it depends on how it is cured. For example the storage time for bacon is very different for immersion / pumped cured bacon as it is for dry cured bacon. Although immersion/pumped cured bacon increases the salt content of the meat and adds the nitrite it also increases water content as well - by up to 10-12%. This gives it a chilled unsliced shelf life of only a week. Dry curing bacon on the other hand will slightly reduce the water content of the bacon giving it a chilled unsliced shelf life of about 6 weeks.

The curing process will also have an effect on the safety of the smoking temperature as the higher the moisture content the more likely bacteria will grow. It is a balance though as the salt in the cure (regardless of the curing method) will have an inhibitory effect on bacterial growth.

Assuming you are using Nitrite in your cure then it is preferable to smoke your bacon at between 12-20 C. This is often easier to achieve overnight in the summer. It does not have to be done all at once either. If you are smoking for 24 hours or more, split the time down to 3 x 8 hour overnight smokes, returning it to the fridge during the day. This also helps the penetration of the smoke through the bacon.

If you do not use Nitrite you should keep the bacon chilled, as you would fresh meat.

The only reason I can think of for smoking at higher temperatures is to reduce water content. For example, when producing traditional smoked salmon this is often done at around 24-26 C. When curing salmon this way you are aiming to reduce the weight of the fish by about 18% through water loss.

Welcome to the forum Steve. What did you smoke? Any photos?

Thanks Steve - great advice 

On 25/08/2017 at 11:18 PM, Dan said:

Wow! Great, thorough review! I've been smoking pretty much everything on the weber 57 but was toying with the idea of a cheap ish bullet that I could cold smoke in as well. 

Yes, the Weber 57 is a great all rounder as you say. You can do some limited cold smoking in it too but heat dissipation can be a problem even with the coolest running cold smoke generators. There are some innovative external "mail box mods" though that allow the smoke to cool before it enters the smoker. Placing a tray of ice inside the Weber can also help.

13 minutes ago, Liomer said:

I see you have a Thermoworks Smoke thermometer.  Do the probes fit through the probe-holes on the Callow?

 

I am using my Smoke in another smoker at the moment so I will check later today and let you know. I usually just run the wires between the section joints.

There you go . Please be the first to post in there....

I am in Woodchurch. Where are you. I was beginning to think I was a lone wolf in the wilderness down here .

I have eaten at Que's once and it was OK. Quite commercial versions of BBQ as you would expect but tasty. They have part of the restaurant as a wine bar too which is where most of their trade comes from I think

I use an FEC-120 from Cookshack and apart from a few teething problems when they moved to the multi-layer 240 v board it has worked flawlessly. The BBQ restaurant Que's in Ashford near me also run on a couple of them too. Good capacity and very easy to use.

Hi Richard and welcome to the forum. 

CWS is a great resource for instant news and views. We have started the forum to provide a longer term reference resource - which is often difficult to achieve using the Facebook format.

We look forward to your contributions 

Hi Stu - Welcome to the forum

Hopefully this will be a good companion site to CWS. We have been working with Marcus over the last few months to try to get the balance right