DIY Sausage Smokehouse

[Blue Tick]

Man I need to start making my own sausage. How long are you smoking them in there? Are they fully cooked when your done?

[Smart]

Forgive me for my lack of knowledge here but does the pipe sit underneath the smokehouse and the smoke rise through the mesh or do you have it plumbed in somewhere that I overlooked?

The pipe has a 90 on it and there is a hole cut in the center of the mesh. The pipe is put through the hole and sticks through it about 3"

Man I need to start making my own sausage. How long are you smoking them in there? Are they fully cooked when your done?

The sausage is cold smoked and is for flavor. You just want to make sure the sausage takes the smoke....not cook it. If you were to cook 100 links, you would basically be vacuum sealing what would essentially be 100 links of wrinkled leftovers. We, like most DIY sausage makers, cold smoke it and package it so that it is ready to be and needs to be cooked when you put it on the grill. BTW a nice firebox has replaced the half barrel seen in the pics.


I sent this to BBH last night via PM because he asked the same question. I'm just going to cut/paste my reply to him. This is just what we like....many folks do it many different ways but this works best for us.

We pipe the smoke into it from a small "fire box" on the side of our smokehouse. The firebox is several feet away to try to disperse some of the heat as it flows through the pipe. There is some natural heat, of course, but 90% of the heat is in the firebox and not in the smoke or smoke house. Whether the meat takes the smoke well or not depends on humidity. Low humidity and cold temps like after a blue norther or cold front is the best. It usually takes us 4-5 hours to smoke 100-400 links in low humidity and cool weather. If it is super humid like fog, mist or rain, we have had to smoke it up to 17 hours and that sucks. We don't do that unless we have too. The 17 hour episode was bad timing. Some of us had traveled 7 hours to make it and the forecast was incorrect. We had to do it and it ended up taking a LONG, LONG time. We like it under 50 deg outside temps, to keep sausage from spoiling in the smokehouse. The cooler the better when making and smoking. You can buy cure, aka Tender Quick, and be a little safer if it is warmer but it is not necessary if you do it on a colder day.

You will want a 1/4 ring of reddish tint/smoke-ring around the link after you cook. We'll make a couple of half links for testing and cook them at 4-5 hours and then later if needed to check. If it has the ring, we'll smoke it another hour and then start vacuum packaging. If not, its time for more beer until it does...

When it gets close to being done...it'll go from this color...








to this...

[Blue Tick]

Thanks. I really need to do this. I spent way to much on sausage this year again!

[MIke Garcia]

Sweet, looks awesome, and sausage makes me hungry

[Blue Tick]

Bringing this back up. Jason, what do you use in your firebox and how long does it last? Is the fire box the only source of heat/smoke you have for the smokehouse? Do you have to keep adding to the fire box to keep it going? What are you using for smoke, do you have a cast iron plate with chips?

[ggreg02]

Bringing this back up. Jason, what do you use in your firebox and how long does it last? Is the fire box the only source of heat/smoke you have for the smokehouse? Do you have to keep adding to the fire box to keep it going? What are you using for smoke, do you have a cast iron plate with chips?

My friend dad has a similar setup. He uses an old washing machine tub as the fire box. He sets it in side with some tongs that hooks in the holes in the tub. It works great.

[Sackett]

Great DIY! Going to try and make one before season starts.

[Smart]

Bringing this back up. Jason, what do you use in your firebox and how long does it last? Is the fire box the only source of heat/smoke you have for the smokehouse? Do you have to keep adding to the fire box to keep it going? What are you using for smoke, do you have a cast iron plate with chips?

Sorry just seeing this... The firebox is a small 12"x24" pipe grill that we burn hickory in and pipe it into the bottom of the smoker. This is not meant for heat.. This is a cold smoke process. We are not cooking, we are adding smoke for flavor. You have to cook our sausage when you pull it back out of the freezer to eat. Sausage that is heated is cooked sausage and you might as well be packaging 200 links of leftovers which we don't care for. I think our temps last year were in the mid 60s inside the house with 45-50 deg outside.

We burn hickory, mesquite or pecan wood. we use small split logs we get or buy chunks at Academy. It depends on what we have and what we want to do that year as far as wood type choice. I prefer mesquite my buddy prefers hickory . Sometimes we mix them.

You do have to add some wood throughout the day much like any stick burning smoker. A full sausage smoke may last 5 hours or 15 hours depending on the temp and more importantly humidity. Humidity equal looooong smoke. We try to smoke on a blue norther weekend where it is cold and dry.



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[Smart]

BTW...are the pic in post 79 not visible?....they are to me.

[cpr1979]

I can see the pics. May have to try this myself

[Smart]

I can see the pics. May have to try this myself

Thanks cpr.....

[Blood Trail]

bump it up

[RickyS]

Poortable Smoke House

I helped a friend of mine make sausage saturday. Here's some pictures of his smoke house. We put it together, smoked the sausage and had it torn down and put back up in about 3 hours.

[RickyS]

Poorboys Smoke House

I helped DirtyMike make sausage three weeks ago. Here's his smoke house he made using scrap 2X4's and fence boards....mostly.

[Brizket]

Well done sir. Built our smokehouse 2 years ago. 6x6x10. Cool thing is that the base is on a "floating slab", so we can actually move the entire house, intact. Only moved it once, but it worked like a charm.