Cold Smokers: Maze type vs Electric vs DIY

[IbrahimSS]

Hello

I'm extremely interested in a cold smoker mainly for smoking up some fish. Right now I'm torn between the a maze type cold smoker or an electric for the smoke generator. They don't look that hard to build but frankly at the price I'm not sure it's worth doing even though both seem rather simple to rig together. So this search has now lead me the A-maze-N or WoodPelletSmoker's cold smoker.

Anyone know the pros/cons of these types of cold smokers?

Thanks
Sam

[Teamfour]

I use the A-maze-n pellet maze and it works great!

[aawa]

I have the A-maz-n smoker (the kind that only uses dust) My first run was on some cheddar cheese. I am going to be opening it up tonight to taste the cheese to see how it turned out. Using it was a breeze. In 48degree ambient temperature I used the AMNS and the temps in my Mini never went above 73 degrees.

[IbrahimSS]

thanks for the replies... Anyone have any experience with both types? Another example of the electric is the Smoke Daddy albeit significantly more expensive.

[koko1]

Another vote for the maze. I have the pellet tube smoker and get 4+ hours of tbs out of it. On a plus side, Todd the guy that owns it, Is a great guy and a pleasure to do business with.


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[Marwendholt]

I have the A-maze-n pellet smoker and I love it. I thought about one of the fancy electric generators, but I didn't want to mess with having to plug it in. I wouldn't trade my maze for any other cold smoke generator on the market.

[Yendor]

I have a strainer with the center punched up to look like a doughnut, works great. I also have a can with a hole drilled into it and a new cheap soldering iron that I have not used yet, I heard that method works great though.

[daninnewjersey]

I used the soldering iron/tin can thing for a while. Then my Harbor Freight soldering iron took a crap (plus the electric cord for the soldering iron was a pain in the ass). Since then, I've found there are a lot of things you can use for cold smoking....shell, cat food can (with bottom holes), and sometimes I just put a couple lit coals in my fire basket and put wood right on top of the coals. They never get too hot and burns for a couple hours....

[IbrahimSS]

Originally Posted by daninnewjersey

...sometimes I just put a couple lit coals in my fire basket and put wood right on top of the coals. They never get too hot and burns for a couple hours....

Hmmm... Im' going to have to give this a try before buying anything!

[---k---]

I did the wood chunks ontop of charcoal once. The virtualbullet website has a good write up. It worked well. I need to pratice ans experiment with it more. I bought a Maze because I needed a new toy. I also liked the fact that it would be easy to repeat the same every time, while the charcoal could vary based on how lit the charcoal is, how big chunks, etc.

I see no downside to the tin can soldering iron method. Lots of people here use it. It is all just a matter of experimenting with it to determine how long to smoke, how long to rest, etc.

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[HeSmellsLikeSmoke]

I keep wondering which method produces the cleanest burning smoke?

[IbrahimSS]

Originally Posted by ---k---

I did the wood chunks ontop of charcoal once. The virtualbullet website has a good write up. It worked well. I need to pratice ans experiment with it more. I bought a Maze because I needed a new toy. I also liked the fact that it would be easy to repeat the same every time, while the charcoal could vary based on how lit the charcoal is, how big chunks, etc.

I see no downside to the tin can soldering iron method. Lots of people here use it. It is all just a matter of experimenting with it to determine how long to smoke, how long to rest, etc.

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do you have a link? you can PM me if it's against some policy!

[HB-BBQ]

I have tried the soldering iron, the charcoal/wood chunk combo, using pellets and or woodchips and just couldn't get the try flavor I was after...it was always bitter or too smokey. I recently bought the 6X6 A-Maze-n maze smoker and haven't looked back. It produces a nice, clean light blue smoke which is something I had not been able to achieve with other prior methods. I found the apple dust to be my favorite so far but i plan to experiment soon with a mix of apple/hickory for my next cheese smoke.

[IamMadMan]

I am more than please with my A-Maze-N pellet smoker. Great results every time.