Pk-100 Bitter Smoke

[Woody1551]

Hi guys, new here and also brand new owner of PK-100 3 weeks ago. I haven’t used it much yet, but I have experienced that heavy white bitter smoke twice now with bacon and some queso dip. Just curious how you guys with this smoker are avoiding this? I am using hickory sawdust fro PS. About 2/3 pan full and have done both dry and moist. Anyone have any tips? Have been running at 1250 watts because it is very cold here in Wisconsin.

[processhead]

If you burn fuel in a smoker with a cold interior and cold meat, the smoke will not be absorbed by the meat properly. Instead, it will condense as creosote on the meat surface.
This is why it is important to bring the smoker and the meat inside, up to temperature before lighting the sawdust.
I don’t know if this is your situation or not. Just throwing it out as a possibility, since you said it is very cold there.

[samspade]

Ok guilty here. Thanks for the info.

[bpschuebel]

Totally agree with processhead; another thing you may want confirm is proper vent settings while smoking. If your smoker isn’t able to breath/vent out properly due to weather conditions or wrong settings, the smoke can become trapped potentially causing the bitter smoke.

[Jonathon]

Woody1551 I was also going to ask what your smoke schedule was and what chips you used?

[Woody1551]

So for the queso dip, I may have put it in too early. I mixed all the cold ingredients into a pan (meat was warm) and set the PK at 250 and probably didn’t let it warm up if I remember.

For the bacon, I did yesterday I prewarmed the PK for about 30 minutes to 150 and then dropped it to 100 before I put bacon in.
I then put the almost room temperature bacon in with no smoke for 40 minutes.
I then added a damp 2/3 pan of hickory sawdust from PS Seasoning and bumped up the temperature to 130.
After 2 hours, the smoke stopped, so I added another pan of sawdust, but this time I did not add any water to the sawdust.
When that smoke stopped (about 2 more hours) I bumped up the temperature to 170 until IT of 135 (this took about another 1-1/2 hour.

I tried the bacon after it got to room temperature and fried some and it had that bitter smoke taste. I vacuumed sealed it now and will rest it for 2 days in the fridge and see how it tastes…hoping it will mellow a bit.

Just wondering what you all with the PK-100 are doing and if you are adding water to sawdust?

Thanks for all the suggestions so far

[Woody1551]

Forgot to add vent settings…

First hour-open vents.
During smoke, 1/3 open.
During the last step, closed with no smoke.

[processhead]

Woody1551

I am not seeing any red flags on your bacon smoking process.
Although unlikely since you are using damp sawdust, you might want to ensure the sawdust is just smoldering slowly, and NOT burning with an open flame.