My first Rodeo

[rveal23]

And what a slippery slope it is, as rveal 23 says.  I'm Tskeeter, and I'm addicted to smoking.  For me, it started with a Mastercraft smoker.  Because I'm lazy, and wanted the advantages of a bisquette feeder, the smoker was soon replaced with a six rack Bradley.  Then I needed meat grinder and sausage stuffer attachments for the mixer.  After one use, these were upgraded to a real meat grinder and a 5# vertical stuffer.  Along the way I seemed to accumulate little things.  Like bubba pucks, smoke sticks, wireless thermometers, heating element modifications, PIDs, a duplicate set of racks, frog mats, a wider assortment of bisquettes, bisquette storage containers, cold smoker attachment, stainless stuffing tubes, sheet pans with drying racks, and the like.  Along with a fair collection of spare heating elements and puck burners, so my therapy, uh, smoking sessions wouldn't be interrupted by an equipment failure.   These were followed by HOA approval for a smoker house masquerading as a garden shed.  Which had to be equipped with a smoker stand, semi permanent wiring, flex arm light, and flip down tray shelf.  Last weekend my smoking accessories were augmented by a small freezer.  (So I could save money by buying meat when it is on sale.  And so I would have room to store the results of my mania.)

I keep telling SWMBO about how much we are saving by not going out for  ribs, not buying smoked cheese, not buying pulled pork, or expensive smoked salmon, or good sausage, or smoked nuts.

On the other hand, there is no way I'm fessing up to how much I've spent on my smoking rig.   

Love it! I think we many of us are right there with you or heading in that same direction. And I do believe we are saving lots of money down the road that is.  That's my story and I'm sticking with it.

[Bagman]

Hey Bagman... a four rack Bradley hold 30# of SS...10/3# rolls. It sounds like your a smart cookie so with the help of some friends like I found on here, turn your 4 rack into a 8 rack and put one high up in the cabinet and then I hang 5 rolls from 2 dowel rods. Once hanging I space them out and try to keep them from touching, then they get 3 hours of wonderful hickory smoke and into a water bath. Don't forget to rotate front to back or if you leave them in there for 3 hours the ones in the back may get burnt on the bottom by the element. Good Luck and hurry up with the money shot.

We were afraid off the bottoms drying out so we cut the 2.5x20 casings in half and used the racks, which seemed to work out fine except the limited capacity.  One of my buddies has an old all metal fridge and we will get a heating element, Bradley smoke generator and PID for our smoking. But that is down the road and for now we will heed the advise of Tenpoint and tweak the flavor of the SS with smaller batches.  My wife and several others have said that they prefer the milder flavor of our SS to that of the SS made at the meat processor, but with experimentation comes knowledge!  Still can't figure out how to insert a picture file.