I saw
this and thought you might be interested.
"Quote:
Originally Posted by Swine Spectator
I have the Amaz-N tube smoker. I tried smoking cheese last year with pellets, but it came out very poorly. Bitter smoke. Any tips?
Oh man... does this bring back memories. I almost trashed my Amaz-N Tube earlier this year but here's what I learned.....
1) Use absolutely dry pellets. If you have to, warm them up, nuke them, do anything you can to avoid damp or moisture laden pellets. I buy very small bags that are airtight (Pit Boss???) and avoid the large sacks that have air holes. Even then I vac seal what I don't use. One small pack of pellets gives me at least four rounds of cheese smokes.
2) Get that tube as far away from the food as possible. In doing some research I came across a cold smoking set up that had the smoke source some 20 feet away from the food area. This allows for the nasty bits to settle out before resting on the food. My first attempt had the tube in the food chamber near the cheese and "YUCK" the food was nasty. Now I use the firebox of my offset for the tube and try to make the smoke travel as far as possible. Much improved flavor on all subsequent batches.
3) Leave the firebox door open - let some of the excess smoke go elsewhere. As long as you have some smoke coming out the stack you're good to go. You do not need all the smoke the tube generates to get a smoke flavor. I'll run mine open about 3" or so - looking for light wispy smoke coming out the exhaust.
4) A little smoke goes a long way.... I've cut my smoke time down to one hour. On the harder cheeses you can get away with more but my "preference" seems to land at the one hour mark regardless of cheese type.
They will need 2 to 3 weeks in the fridge to mellow a bit before we dig in.
I pulled a block of Muenster out let it come up to room temp and sliced away over the weekend. OMG - it was simply heavenly. Had to really show some restraint to avoid eating the entire block. Anyway, hope some of the above items improve your cheese smoking efforts. Good luck."