Thinking about building a smokehouse and wondered if any of you other antipodean types had such a thing .

Looking for clever ideas and suggestions . I have several books with plans but they are US books . There might be a more appropriate design for our type of conditions maybe....

Smoke House?
A mate of mine has a hot smoker built out of one of those cheap tinplate tool boxes. He lifted it of the ground with a few bricks and has the fire under it. He has made some shelving out of steel mesh and swaps the rows every half hours or so.
When asked about the galv he said that it blackened off really quickly and hasn't tainted anything yet. When it rusts out he will just by another for $30 and start again.
Fairly cheap and simple but not very pretty. Can put about 10 or so pan size snapper in at once

Thanks mate , - thinking more along the lines of smoking sides of bacon ( although how you get the paper wrapped around it and light the end defeats me just yet...) and deer hams and the like , so really need to have a walk-in type building . Have access to a couple of those hot smokers already , this will be a cold smoker, hopefully .

Hey Muzza
Get yourself one of these: http://www.thesmokering.com/pits/metalpit/bigbaby/default.jsp

I built one myself and results are excellent, and you would easily get a side of pork in it.
The trick is to go slow with the fire if you want to smoke something or just ramp the fire up a bit if you want to slow cook a roast or something.
yuo don't need to Vogelsang flue kit, just improvise a bit there to get some air flow control happening.

Cheers

No worries. Have printed off a copy of the "Big Baby Cooker" doesn't sound so PC (not you PC) but might be just the thing to set up when I finally stop moving around.
Let us know what you finally end up with and how it works.
Cheers
robe

ps Does deer have enough fat in it to smoke? Or are you after a jerky result?
No pun intended.

A good friend smokes all of his dry-stick sausage, bacon and an occasional ham in his garden tool shed. He just sets up a little hibatchi type grill and keeps the smoke going for however long. Makes the rakes and shovels smell good, too.

Here's a better site with better pics etc.
Should give you some more ideas.

http://bbq.about.com/gi/dynamic/offsite.htm?site=http%3...sell.net%2Fsmoker%2F

A uncle of mine smokes fish and meat in a old refrigerator. He mounted a old propane stove burner to the underside with a hole cut in the floor to allow the heat in and drilled some vent holes in the walls. He places a pan of wet wood over the hole and controls the temp by reading a meat thermometer he mounted through the wall of the box. The gauge is readable from the outside so opening the door is not needed. The meat can be placed on the racks or hung from a meat hook attached to the roof. You can fit a venison hind on the hook or make jerky on the racks. The burner allows excellent temp control and the parts were all free.

Muzza

I've got a smokehouse.

I will post a photo or two. I'll take them this adternoon.

It is made of bluestone and red brick. Stands about 12 feet high and has two doors.

See if you can make one like it.

Thanks guys. There are lots of different ideas and plans - I am angling towards a walk-in wooden structure about 4 foot square and tall enough to stand up in . Johns brick and stone edifice sounds impressive , but I dont want to need a building permit for it ....

The double drum-burners look good for hot smoking and big barbecue work , but I am really after a cold smoker.

G'day Muzza,
The main advantage of construction like John's would be to control the temperature better, in our climate. It's a critical parameter in cold smoking. Concrete blocks would be easier than brick and bluestone, though. A remote fire setup is best for cold smoking - easy enough to do.

But here are a few more plans from my bookmarks:
http://www.canr.uconn.edu/ansci/ext/build_smokehouse.pdf
http://www.ag.ndsu.nodak.edu/abeng/plans/MISC.htm - plan nos. 5351, 5352, 5695
http://www.australianoutdoors.com/howtocoldsmoker.htm
http://www.sticksite.com/smoking.htm
http://www.i4at.org/lib2/smokehs.htm

It's also worth a hunt for decent books on this subject; a couple I use are Erlandson, "Home Smoking and Curing" ISBN 0 0917 7825 5; and Dubbs and Heberle, "The Quick and Easy Art of Smoking Food" ISBN 0 8329 0462 7. These go into good detail on equipment [from basic cooker/smokers on up], techniques and brine formulas.

Hi Muzza,
We used to use a 44 gallon drum to cold smoke hams and the like. The remote fire was covered with a smaller drum split in half lengthwise, and clay field drain pipes led the smoke up a slight slope to the big drum, about 4 to 6 feet long to get rid of the heat. Only takes a morning to construct, cost basically nothing. We used dry branches fallen off an oak tree for fuel, gave a very nice flavour.
Cheers,
Tom

Cold Smokers are easy to build. I built a 4 ft square and 8 ft tall smoker when I lived in Alaska for cold smoking salmon.

Use five sheets of 1/2", 4'x8' sheets of plywood and build you an outhouse looking building. Leave a 4"-6" gap at the top all the way around and screen it with fine screen to keep the bugs away and allows the smoke to escape. My smoke source was a 55 gallon drum laid on its side. I had a 4" diameter stove pipe with dampner feed into the bottom of the smoke house. The drum was placed about 3 feet from the smoke house. Worked great, if my memory serves me correctly if the temperature is below 85 degrees inside the smoke house when you are smoking then the cold smoke properties are best!
Hope this helps. BTW this smoker worked great and those smoked Sockeye Salmon were great! Good Luck!

Not from down under, but from so far back in the sticks that electricity was available only after abouyt '65. My family smoked all our meat along with salt or suger cure, as there was no refigeration. Any of the wooden structures posted to you would work, but I would add this. Build fire pit at least 10' away, and pipe the smoke through clay tile to the bottom of your stucture. Having a slope away from the struture aids this, as the tile needs to run up hill from your fire source, and the tile should be covered by at least 12" of earth. This cools the smoke, allowing for full use as a cure as opposed to actually cooking the meat. That way large chunks of wood can be used, instead of having to wet chips and such. We used an old metal wood cook stove set in the ground with the clay tile hooked to the outlet pipe. Our smoke house was a log structure, with no chinking at the roof level to let smoke escape.

I haven't taken the photo yet. Will take the camera with in a few minutes and do it.

The "edifice" I described is actually about a 150 years old. No longer in use, but might be able to be restored.

An aged motor-bikey used it as a bedroom once, and another time to stash loot in.