I was surprised at how well the sticks did, not any bursting and what I would call small amounts of case hardening. They had a pretty good snap both right away and after they sat out. However, after bringing them out the next day for vacuum sealing I noticed that the casings didn’t have the best “feel” to them. This had happened once before when I laid out sticks for an hour in front of a fan and then put them in the cooler overnight. I think what is happening is that the casing is overdry and then it picks up too much moisture from the fridge. I can’t prove that but it seems to be the only thing these two batches could have had in common.

This would have been released by now but we had a malfunction with a memory card so we are going to reshoot it.

I have done them on my Traeger. The lowest setting on it is “smoke” and it will run about 165 degrees. The next lowest is 180 and then 200. I started on the smoke setting with a small 4x4 propping the lid open. That dropped it down to 130 degrees. Then swapped out the 4x4 with a 2x4. That gave me 150 degrees. Then closed the lid and dialed to 180 till done. I also stole a rack out of my Masterbuilt and used a carriage bolt in each corner to give me racks. Swap the sticks from the bottom and top racks every hour or so or the bottom will cook faster.