Cold Smoked Salmon

[czk]

Does anyone have a good idea how to get the temperature down in a Bradley for smoking salmon? Minimum temperature seems to be about 150F in the chamber. This makes the fish cooked. My wife's instructors at culinary school say no more than 90F for making lox.

I tried one brute force approach, using a variac to lower the voltage to the unit. I can't believe it, but the bisquette burner must be thermostatically controlled. Next is to get some metal ducts and move the bisquette burner away from the cooking chamber.

What am I missing? There must be something easier.

[msiler]

Unplug the main box just to make sure the heat bulb is not on at all. Just plug in the smoke generator and open the vent all the way. this should keep the temp down to about 100 degrees at most if it is not cool enough try a bowl of ice on the bottom rack. Hope that helps.

When in doubt smoke it.

[Chez Bubba]

Also, especially with the black one, make sure it's in the shade. In my experience, the bisquette burner will only produce about 30F additional to ambient if you follow msiler's good advice.

Are you reading the temp from the thermometer in the door or a probe? The door thermometers are perhaps the most negative issue with this otherwise fantastic product, IMHO. To test its' validity, set it in a controlled temp environment & see what it reads after a couple of hours.

Kirk

http://www.chezbubba.com
Ya think next time I check into a hotel & they ask "Smoking or Non?" they would mind?

[whitetailfan]

This is a pretty popular topic in the forum, with a little huntin' you should find you answers.  I use the ice trick cold smokin'
Try here:
http://www.bradleysmoker.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=7

Happy Smoking[8D]

whitetailfan
"Nice Rack"
Lethbridge, AB

[michel]

<blockquote id="quote"><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica" id="quote">quote:<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"><i>Originally posted by czk</i>
<br />Does anyone have a good idea how to get the temperature down in a Bradley for smoking salmon? Minimum temperature seems to be about 150F in the chamber. This makes the fish cooked. My wife's instructors at culinary school say no more than 90F for making lox.

I tried one brute force approach, using a variac to lower the voltage to the unit. I can't believe it, but the bisquette burner must be thermostatically controlled. Next is to get some metal ducts and move the bisquette burner away from the cooking chamber.

What am I missing? There must be something easier.
<hr height="1" noshade id="quote"></blockquote id="quote"></font id="quote">

[michel]

Hi CZK
If you will keep your Bradley smoker for several years it would be worth it to build a smoke box for your smoke generator and run a 4 foot aluminum hose to the smoker. It is the only way to really control your temperature.   temperature for cold smoking salmon must not go beyond 85F  ask the experts. see my reply to this subjet dated nov. 13 2003. In my case I used an old stainless steel sink for my smoke box   had 2, 4 inch holes cut and voila  the box gets hot but dissipates all the heat the hose stays quite cool there is no gain in temperature at all  as a matter of fact if it is 60F outside I have had to use a little bit of heat from the element to get the temperature to 80F. Another plus is that you can close the vent almost completely and get better results.
michel

[Oldman]

Ok I going to jump into this posting and give you all an idea on how to really cool your Bradley smoker. What I'm posting is for your editifcation. Only to offer an idea. It is not a design. You will have to work out the math.

First this is not going to be cheap. However, if you want to smoke at 40-80 F then read on. Below I'm going to show you some components. These items are the upper end designed to run continously. If you shop around you can beat the prices I have listed.

Like everything in your computer system that is better and fastest and companies keep pushing the edge to make geeks happy these quality items shown come from the gaming world. [:D]

First this is a High End Radiator (dry air only) for a water cooling system used in cooling a overclocked computer system. You would have to mount an AC fan to it unless you wanted to use a computer power supply so you could use a computer fan. This would be mounted inside the BS Box. This one cost about $70.00 US.



This one cost around $95.00 US.


Next you would need a radiator. I suggest get one made out of copper. Cost about $145.00 US.


Next you will need a water pump. Cost is around $90.00 US.


Next you will need a fill/bleed reservoir. Cost $27.00 US.


Now without getting into the small stuff like wiring, power supply, connectors we need to address the cooling of the water.

Before I get into that please understand that the radiator shown is the type normal used hanging on the side of a computer. It is not normally place into chilled water. However, there are gamers that do just that.

Now the water reservoir can be somthing as simple as a good ice chest. Below is a drawing of how I would lay this out. Please excuse, for all of my talents working with images I'm a terrible artist.



Now if this does not get cold enough for you there are units out there that will take a box to a minus 30 C. They start out around $1500.00~~~~ sic!

As I said what I've posted here is only to give you guys ideas to look at and by no means is this endorsed by this management (namely me.) LOL!
Olds

[Oldman]

Oh ya, if you think this cost some potato chips the next NVIDIA graphic card that is to come out next month cost more than this whole Dell Dimension 2400 computer system shown below!




Ya Gamers, we are a crazy bunch! But without us you all would still be using 2 meg V-cards!  And thinking that your 17 inch VGA monitor rules!!!
Olds

[czk]

Thank You folks for your informative responses to my questions. The other posts that you referred to warning of too much fiddling with ice got me moving. I did not like the idea of wood with or without aluminum foil lining.
At my local home depot I bought:
a steel mailbox
8 feet of aluminum dryer vent hose 4 inch diameter
2 4 inch round duct to plenum connectors
After the obvious 30 minutes of work, I had true cold smoking. There was less than 10 degrees of temperature rise over ambient.
Some salt and sugar, a little time, some olive oil, and $5/pound salmon, and I had $20/pound LOX. Again, my sincere thanks. The machine is good, the users are even better.
Bob