real cold smoker

[pensrock]

   Hi, I've been brainstorming a little with a friend of mine about cold smoking cheeses during the summer. I know me brainstorming can be dangerous....  ;D
   What I am thinking of trying and I wanted to see if anyone else has tried this before is, taking an old small apartment sized refrigerator, cutting a vent on top and another hole in the side for the dryer vent tube from an offset smoker box. I should be able to adjust the temp in the fridge up but not sure how high, I'd like it to be 50-70 degrees F. As long as I can find a place to cut the holes without disturbing the cooling lines, and I can get the temp up some I think this would work great as a cold smoker.
   So what does everyone think? Is it possible? Pros? Cons?

[manxman]

Seem to remember this was discussed briefly a good while ago on the forum and the consensus was that it would probably work, as you point out potentially the main problem would be it getting too cold rather than too hot for cold smoking!

Would it be possible to have a thermometer in the fridge and have a means of supplying power to the fridge only when needed to maintain the temperature in the desired range, similar to the PID system some people have installed on their OBS's?! I am not an electrician and don't know what temperature ranges are possible out of these things but perhaps someone with the knowledge could chip in..... maybe shoot my idea down in flames.  ;) :D

I assume you live somewhere too hot to cold smoke during the summer months, unfortunately I don't have that problem!  :'(

[iceman]

It can and has been done. Works very nice. I didn't worry about getting the temp up to 50 / 60 F. With the unit running you could just open the vent on top of the fridge and it kept a higher temp.
Be real careful and inspect the unit before cutting the holes. Like you said you can nick a refrigerant line real easy. I found out the hard way that different brands have the lines in different places. :o ::)
Also don't use it to keep beer cold when your not smoking with it. Makes the can taste yukko!  :D ;)
The ones I used had the coils up in the freezer tray section on top so I just took the ice tray door part off. Have fun making cheese and all kinds of cold smoked goodies pensrock.

[pensrock]

I have a small fridge about the size of the Bradley in the garage. It's not doing a good job anymore of keeping the beverages cold but it should be able to keep the cheese chilled while smoking. I'll have to look at the fridge a little closer and play with the controls to see what temp it is running now and how high it will go. I'm looking at a little larger fridge to replace this one with right now so I will not have to worry about using the beer fridge for smoking.  ;) ;)

[speltman]

I was considering doing the same thing with a small refrigerator / freezer Mine, however, is lined on the inside with silver aluminum or foil or what ever it is. It looks nice but I wonder if it might cause some kind of bad reaction? Any Ideas? Could this be a problem?. Thanks Scott

[pensrock]

I can not say for sure but as a cold smoker I can't see any type of reaction that could cause any harm. Now if you were to get it really hot it may want to break down depending on what the material actually is. Maybe others here will now better than I.

[Ontrack]

Dang pens, I was getting so excited about the temps hitting the 70s here. I didn't even think about the cold smoking season coming to an end (for us with stock units). I did do some cheese last August during a cooler evening, but the smoker was packed with ice and it was still a pain to keep it under 90 when the outdoor temps were probably in the 60s. I'm going to go stock up on cheese and do a big cold smoke in the next couple of days (or nights). Thanks for the reminder!

[pensrock]

I have not used the Bradley for cheese yet because I still have not got my offset box welded yet. But from what I hear it makes a big differance. I'm not sure how warm out it can be and still be able to do cheese, with the fridge it would not matter. But I'm thinking if it's in the 70's you are probably close to the max abient temp that you can smoke cheese. This is just my guess but yeah, you better get-er-done while you still can.

[Habanero Smoker]

I have been looking at various equipment to build a dry curing box. One of the things I was checking out was a refrigerator temperature control. I lost the link, but someone on this forum sent me a link to a temperature control device that is used for home wine making. So you may want to do a search in that area.

Hopefully the person who sent me that link, will see this and repost it. I guessing at this point, but it may have been winemaker who sent me the link.

[NePaSmoKer]

For dry curing i use the little wine cooler you can get at Home Depot, Lowes or vinotempDOTcom
mine is a 34 bottle

nepas

[MoSmoke]

Habs,
Here's a link to a couple of temp controls.
http://www.midwestsupplies.com/products/ProdBySubCat.aspx?SubCat=620

John

[Habanero Smoker]

Habs,
Here's a link to a couple of temp controls.
http://www.midwestsupplies.com/products/ProdBySubCat.aspx?SubCat=620

John

John,

Thanks for the link, I booked marked it so I won't lose it again. Between the help you and Iceman have provided, I may eventually get around to building this thing. :)