I have always wanted to smoke in the garage when it’s rainy or cold or windy or whatever the circumstances were. You know the times I’m talking about. You plan this nice smoke, get all set up and a big ole storm cloud rolls in. Or it’s like winter comes and all smoking stops. I wanted a controlled environment. To achieve this required overcoming some obstacles. The major one was that I didn’t have a garage. We remedied that last year so now, how do we get the smoke out? Well, I looked on Craigs List and found this guy selling brand new Broan range vents for $40. He had gotten stuck with a dozen of these on some failed construction project. So, I recently completed the setup and yesterday was shakedown cruise day.
We smoked some salmon for holiday gifts, if it’s good. I’m still struggling with salmon (if anyone has a great brine recipe I could use one). Anyway, it went really well; everything worked as designed. The vent is 2-speed and low is very quiet but still does a great job exhausting the smoke. I see no reason to ever use high.
I’ve dedicated the OBS to salmon, mussels, and cheese after seeing photos of grease fires in a Bradley so the threat of fire is greatly reduced. I will be trying my WSM 18.5" and baby bullet in this spot. I don’t see why it wouldn’t work and be relatively safe. Any thoughts on that? I do intend to put a sheet of metal on the wall before using charcoal here. Not shown but just out of view to the left is the mini fridge with adult beverages
and the garage does have heat
.
Anyway, here's some proof and thanks for looking -
3.5 lb. of Atlantic Salmon with pellicle on
The new setup -
Salmon in process with apple smoke -
Ready for the deep freeze -