anybody use a UDS to smoke sausage?

[hog warden]

I tried a lot of things with the UDS, and didn't have much luck. I then built a second, dedicated smoking drum, patterned after a UDS, but using a gas burner for heat and separate smoke generator. That kinda, sorta works, but you have to watch it like a hawk.

Smoking sausage is somewhat like smoking butts, ribs, etc. We are cooking them with heat and smoke to certain internal temps. The problem with sausage is the temps are all lower. Starting with smoker temps around 125 for an hour or so, then 160 with heavy smoke for an hour or so, then on up to 175 for as long as it takes to get the internal temp of the sausage up to about 155-160 range. Too hot and the fat in the sausage starts to melt, and you are screwed. Temps in the sausage come up to the 140 or so range pretty fast, when the temperature difference is great, but once the temp in the sausage gets about the same as the temp in the smoker, it slows to a crawl. Depending on the size of the sausage, that can take several hours. That is hard to maintain inside a UDS using charcoal.

To get an idea of what you are looking for, it helps to go to commercial built units, to see how then work, then start backwards from there. More or less trying to reverse engineer them. So start here:

http://www.sausagemaker.com/4010130l...eelsmoker.aspx

Built for the purpose and I suspect works great. Price? Ouch. Would love to see one of those and the MES running side by side, MES being about 1/3 the price.

What both are doing, is putting the source of heat and smoke inside the smoker, which is apparently the hardest way to do it without screwing up.....at least with a live fire scenario as would be the case with wood or charcoal inside a UDS. Easier to do with gas or electric. Set it and forget it.

For more technical info than you ever wanted to know, take a peak at this:

http://www.meatsandsausages.com/smok...e-meat-smokers

It looks to me like the pellet smoker concept is ready made for this, but needs to be operating inside an upright cabinet. I only know of one of those, and the price is up there ($5k). Most of the pellet smokers seem to be designed for the meat smoker (not sausage smoker) market.....butts, ribs, etc., with the secondary option of grilling.

So what we need is for Yoder to graft their pellet smoker mechanism onto a smaller Stockton style upright cabinet and we are good to go!

Or for half the price of that, get the smoker from Sausagemaker, or for 1/3rd of that, buy a MES. Or keep working on our UDS.

[Snarlingiron]

MES. It might be a bad word here but I love mine.

Well I gotta tell you that I have smoked a ton of sausage in mine. Easy Peasy with the Smoke Daddy or the AMNTS. I also successfully used it to make Droewors last week. No smoke just used for a drying chamber. Set the temp on 100° (lowest setting on the MES) and let her go for 4 days. Perfect.

[DDave]

The only problem I can see is if you start to get flare up's from the droppings. The temp might start to get out of control.

Another issue is checking the temp of the sausage towards the end of the cook. If you're wanting to get to 152° but not over, taking the lid off a UDS to check temps of the meat can be problematic if you're trying to keep the temps down. I think with a deflector it may be a bit easier. But I haven't tried it yet.

Set the temp on 100° (lowest setting on the MES) and let her go for 4 days. Perfect.

Hmm . . . did not know that they would go that low. Maybe I should look at buying an MES for jerky, sausage and such instead of trying to build an electric.

Dave

[Mikey]

I wonder how well this would work on a UDS. Temp range is from 0-160°F.
@ $144.45 it appears to be a good deal
http://www.auberins.com/index.php?ma...roducts_id=351

[DDave]

I wonder how well this would work on a UDS. Temp range is from 0-160°F.
@ $144.45 it appears to be a good deal
http://www.auberins.com/index.php?ma...roducts_id=351

Heh, works fantastic, Mikey. When the fan is plugged into the correct port that is.

I've had one for several years now.

Dave

[Bama BBQ]

I build a "C" shaped fire in the WSM which after all is basically a fancy drum. When I wanna increase temp I add a row or stack of charcoal. I've had pretty good luck with the technique.

[hog warden]

After a few uses of my a-maze-in smoke generator, I decided to take another look at my UDS smoker setup.

For this test, the goal was smoked polish sausage, following this recipe.

http://www.meatsandsausages.com/saus...ish-hot-smoked

But instead of hot smoking / cooking it, this was a cold smoke only using the smoke generator. My trouble in the past was to find a way to create even smoke for a longer period of time, with no flareups, etc. For this, the A-Maze-In is a game changer.

So essentially, this is treated as a fresh or uncooked sausage, except it has been exposed to smoke. It will have to be fully cooked on down the line, but I normally do that anyway. Rather than grilling, normal cooking method is to simmer or poach this in a skillet with a little water until it is fully cooked. When the water boils off, the skin is browned in the fat that melts from the sausage. An alternative is to slap it on the grill like a brat or any other fresh sausage.

But because it was smoked, it does have cure in it. Also, while it was in the barrel for over 12 hours, this being a colder winter day, temps never exceeded normal refrigeration temps of 45 degrees or so.

This one got a full dose of 10 hours plus of hickory smoke and it is smoky. Get anywhere near it and you can smell the smoke on you for several minutes. Will see how it turns out, but it may not need that much just for the smoke flavor.

Key feature of this sausage is the garlic. You really notice it. Yum.

Setup of drum interior has steel brackets replacing the normal U bolts. This provides a rest for the smoking sticks, or for a grill rack. These are about 6" below the top of the drum to keep the meat below the smoker layer at the top. Drum also has an 8" diameter hole in the bottom to enable a heat source from below if you wanted to hot smoke. Could be a hot plate or small gas burner. As drum smokers go, this one is really simple.

Wind affects it some, but not as much as the sun does. On sunny day, I have seen temperature spikes of as much as 15 to 20 degrees. On a calm day, the heat from the smoke generator alone raises the temps about 10 to 15 degrees. On a windy day, it draws more, so not so much.

[hog warden]

Question for you guys running MES or similar smokers. How big are the draft mechanisms? Top and bottom.

The lid on my UDS smoking drum has the normal 2" ID cast iron pipe and when it has a heat source running, that is pushing a huge amount of air through there. Heat (and smoke) are running right on through the barrel. I had my A-maze-In burning on both ends to get it close to the right amount of smoke.

That amount of air flow is probably a good thing when starting out to get the casings drying out, but not later on. Or maybe it is? My guess is most commercial smokers don't let that much heat and smoke out. On the other hand, I've read where the right amount of draft to vent the smoke and moisture in a drum is to set the lid on top of two broomsticks. That would allow a huge volume of smoke and air running through it and would require a large source of heat and smoke to keep up.

BTW, I have tried a 750 watt electric hot plate and with outside temps around 10 degrees F, it couldn't get the uninsulated 55 gallon barrel up to 100 degrees. It might work once the weather warms up. According to my calculations, a 750 watt burner is about equal to 2,500 BTU.

Best match for the amount of heat you need seems to come from small gas burners in the 7,500 to 10,000 BTU range. Coleman gas stove type burners. Those can get the temps up to 200 or so with no problem or can throttle way back and are not as affected by the wind.

Burners off the fish cookers, even those in the 40,000 BTU range seem to be too large for a 55 gallon drum. To throttle them back enough, you have to turn the flames way down and then the wind will snuff em out. Not good to have live gas running with a pellet smoker. That is a good strategy for launching a drum smoker over your house.

[DDave]

I can't answer your MES question but I can share what I have come up with for draft for a UDS.

The lid on my UDS smoking drum has the normal 2" ID cast iron pipe and when it has a heat source running, that is pushing a huge amount of air through there. Heat (and smoke) are running right on through the barrel. I had my A-maze-In burning on both ends to get it close to the right amount of smoke.

I played with this a lot going from eight 1/2" holes to eight 3/4" holes to finally a Weber lid with an added vent.



I felt that this gave me the best results and eliminated a battle I was having with bitter taste on the meat that, I theorized, was the result of creosote forming from inadequate airflow.

With both vents open it works out to eight 7/8" holes or 4.81 square inches of vent area. A single 2" opening gives you 3.14 square inches of area.

On the other hand, I've read where the right amount of draft to vent the smoke and moisture in a drum is to set the lid on top of two broomsticks. That would allow a huge volume of smoke and air running through it and would require a large source of heat and smoke to keep up.

Hmm . . . I've never heard that but I'm guessing that it would be pretty difficult to control the temp if you used a charcoal basket for fuel. An awful lot of extra air would be getting in there with a lid configuration like that.

Best match for the amount of heat you need seems to come from small gas burners in the 7,500 to 10,000 BTU range. Coleman gas stove type burners. Those can get the temps up to 200 or so with no problem or can throttle way back and are not as affected by the wind.

Not sure how you would keep it lit without some very big vents in the bottom of the drum. As I understand it, propane burners need quite a bit of air to run properly and I don't know if one would stay lit at the bottom of a drum that had, say, three 3/4" intakes like a lot of UDSs have.

I think your electric hot plate and pellet smoker are a great idea but, like you said, won't work so well when it is 10° out. One of these weekends I'll get around to doing a "low temp sausage smoke simulation" in the UDS with the Auber controller.

Dave

[hog warden]

Dave:

I probably should clarify some things. I actually have two drums. One a UDS.....the other is a drum I am trying to setup as a dedicated sausage smoker. The drum I'm working with now is the sausage smoker. In this photo, it is the black one on the left:

[IMG][/IMG]

I more or less gave up on the idea of making a sausage smoker out of the UDS, as getting the right amount of heat in there and getting it stabilized without access to the heat source was too much of a problem to overcome. The one idea I didn't try, and one that might work, was to use a gas pipe burner like this one:



The venturi is left on the outside, and you would insert the gas burner through one of your side vent holes. That would get it out of the wind and it could be protected by a piece of angle iron inverted above it , which would also act as a heat defuser. But it would have to be a very short section of pipe or else it would generate far too much heat.

Anyway, I'm working with the barrel on the left, which has a hole cut into the bottom of it. The heat source is under and outside the barrel, and the barrel itself is then elevated above an enclosure, with a heat baffle over the hole. The heat baffle is simply a lid off a 30 gallon drum.

[IMG][/IMG]

[IMG][/IMG]

That way you have access to the heat source. It could be wood, charcoal, gas or electric. Due to the long burns, and desire for steady even heat from a cheap and simple setup, I've gravitated to gas and electric. Of those two, gas produces the most heat for the least effort. A very small gas burner at a low setting generates all the heat that is needed. Wind is the biggest enemy of this. Unless you have an area that is really protected by the wind, a gas burner outside the barrel, throttled back to these low temps, is likely to get snuffed out by a gust of wind. As Dave says, to work at all they have to breathe and get access to air, so the base can't be fully enclosed.

Again, this isn't as simple as a set it and forget it model with a thermostat and controlled heat source, but is probably something that might work for some folks and could be built for around $100.

If the heat source was capable of temps inside the drum of up to 275, this could also become a smoker capable of handling ribs, butts, etc. Smoke has to come from somewhere and at those temps, from the outside, but an AMNTS could handle that.

[hog warden]

BTW, another option for this using a gas burner under the drum is to set the larger gas burner inside an enclosure under the drum, but instead of a large hole, you have small holes, or perhaps no holes at all. The bottom of the drum would become the "pan" on top of burner. Heat it up and let it radiate the heat up into the drum. That concept might work on an actual UDS, with AMNTS inside, and using the existing vent holes.

That separates the gas from the flame of the pellet smoker and allows you to use a hotter burner off the higher BTU fish cooker. Hmmmmm.

[eccj]

Couldn't you do some sort of offset smokebox attachment, add a ring like the Smoke-EZ to increase the amount of cook space and then add a chimney on top? Those are my thoughts. That might solve your problems with temp control and creosote build up!

[DDave]

Anyway, I'm working with the barrel on the left, which has a hole cut into the bottom of it. The heat source is under and outside the barrel, and the barrel itself is then elevated above an enclosure, with a heat baffle over the hole. The heat baffle is simply a lid off a 30 gallon drum.

Gotcha.

Sounds like you're on the right track.

Dave

[hog warden]

A quick update. Got a chance to test my actual UDS drum resting on an elevated platform with a 40,000 BTU banjo burner underneath. Burner is simply heating up the bottom of the barrel from the outside, transferring heat to the inside of the barrel using convection and radiant heat. Most attempts at smoking sausage and other meats using a barrel all run the heat into and through the barrel. That is what I've been trying to do with the black barrel. This UDS setup leaves all the combustible gasses and heat from the gas burner on the outside. To clarify, this is a standard UDS with no modifications at all.

With temps around 20 degrees and a north wind blowing about 15 mph, and the burner cranked up about as high as it will go, I was able to get the temps inside the barrel up to as high as 175, which is as much heat as you would want to smoke sausage. Under less extreme conditions, this should work fine. Once you get it dialed in for the conditions, temps inside the barrel remain remarkably stable.

With a smoke generator on the inside, this seems to be working OK, except when I had the side valve fully open and with temps running around 170, the entire tray of pellets caught fire. I have had this happen a couple times when the smoke generator is inside the smoker and exposed to that level of heat.

But bottom line is if you wanted to try smoking sausage in a UDS, this might be a way to go about it. One downside of this is it is using more gas than I would like. If you wanted to tend it and keep an eye on it, as an alternative to a gas burner, you could probably move your charcoal basket outside and beneath the barrel as I'm doing with my gas burner and use either charcoal or real wood as your heat source. A bit of trial and error playing with the fire size would be required.

One other potential downside, using gas, wood or charcoal is this might burn out the bottom of your barrel a lot faster than might happen under normal use.