I am new to snack stick and sausage making and bought a Smoke Hollow 3616 digital electric vertical smoker to be able to use the low temperature drying and smoking features. It’s a simple ad straightforward smoker with heating element, wood chip drawer and water pan on the bottom and temperature probe and controller on top. I started a batch of snack sticks the other night by taking all of the racks out and suspending the snack sticks on dowels in place of the top rack. I put a remote thermometer probe in the center of one of the snack sticks in the center of the group. There were about a dozen snack sticks doubled over three dowels and were not crowded. I had no problems with the drying or smoking cycles and the internal meat temperature came up to 120F or so. I raised the setpoint temperature to the recommended 155F and then to 180F to finish the snack sticks. After an hour or so, the internal meat temperature had only gotten to around 140F so I raised the setpoint to around 200F. I had a remote thermometer in the top damper vent to monitor the temperature inside the smoker and it pretty well agreed with the controller. After another hour, the internal meat temperature had not gotten above 145F, so I hunted around and found my oven temperature thermometer. I hung it off my meat probe so that I could see the air temperature. It stabilized at 160F with the top and bottom of the smoke chamber at 200F. I couldn’t imagine how that could be, but here it was and the snack sticks would never hit 160F internal temperature at the probe without the tops and bottoms overcooking. I’m guessing that the heat was coming up the walls and escaping through the top damper, which could not be closed any further. I pulled the snack sticks out and finished them to 160F in my kitchen oven in just a few minutes after ours of no change in the smoker. They came out fine, but left me with no explanation of why the center of the smoker was colder than the top or bottom. Has any one else experienced such a phenomenon?

The smoker is double wall with a glass door. I don’t know whether there is any insulation between the inner and outer walls or just air space. Wind could be a factor, especially in the flatlands of central Illinois where the wind never stops, just changes direction. I set the smoker up in as sheltered a location as I could, but it has to be outside and, being electric, it has to be near an outlet. Now that I am aware of the issue, it isn’t really a problem. If I see that the meat temperature isn’t rising, I just finish it somewhere else. Once the smoking is done, it really doesn’t matter. I had thought about a water bath, but didn’t have one set up, so I used what was available. Since this is a relatively tall vertical smoker, I had let the snack sticks get pretty long, about 24" doubled over. This works fine in that smoker, but doesn’t fit much of anything else, save the oven. For the next batch, I shortened the snack sticks to about 18" doubled and this is much easier to work with. When I get time, I’ll set the smoker up with several oven thermometers on different racks and see if I can duplicate or change the phenomenon. One thing that I can see is that water is condensing on the glass door panel and running down it as I cook. The water pan never completely dries up even after six hours of continuous use. I don’t see any condensation on the snack stick casings, which would indicate that the glass door panel is colder than they are. I had thought about putting a piece of aluminum foil over the glass door panel to try to reflect some of the heat back in. this may show how things are made to look good, but not necessarily work well.

Jonathon I have a water bath that I could use for that and I have seen where a roaster has been used. Since I don’t have a vacuum chamber machine, I would prefer not to vacuum bag the sausages or snack sticks and I would still want to use my internal temperature probe.

Jonathon You’ve given me several ideas to work on, thanks.