Pequod

Question on the salt -- fine sea salt?

Another Reef recipe imported directly to Paprika!

Interesting coincidence. "HalfSmoke" is my Mother's maiden name too.

That's what I was thinking. I'll use my Smoke to monitor the interior temp just to be safe.

Was planning to cold smoke some cheese tomorrow, but the forecast high is 26 degrees. I'm thinking the smoke blown into my KK will be enough to keep the freeze off my cheese, so full speed ahead. What say you of colder climes? @tony b? @MacKenzie? Cold smoking cheese in freezing temps okay or no?

That's something I haven't done and it looks great! Might have to do that for Easter.

I've used two: https://www.amazon.com/Energizer-Vision-Headlamp-Batteries-Included/dp/B00TI8GSDI/ref=sr_1_11?ie=UTF8&qid=1483730994&sr=8-11&keywords=led+head and https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00XBSADC8/ref=oh_aui_search_detailpage?ie=UTF8&psc=1 There are many versions of the both at varying prices. I prefer the headlamp because it's both bright and tends to point where I do But I always forget to bring the headlamp with me, so the second one is clamped to the handle of my KK pointing down. When I lift the lid it points directly inside the grill.

Somebody asked about KJ's trade in plan, and Bobby's answer was Craigslist. So...yeah, they're really hoping to keep their loyal customers buying a new one every few years. Heck of a business model if you can pull it off.

Yup. I'm in on this idea. Makes sense to me.

My thing back in the day was computational fluid dynamics. It's usually too hard to see what's going on inside flowfields even with the best experimental equipment and cameras, but we CAN simulate our way to a GREAT picture. This 10 seconds of video took over 100 hours of Cray supercomputer time to compute back in 1991. Could do the same thing now on my iPhone. Doesn't look like much, but it shows all the dynamics of turbulent compressible flow inside a channel (i.e., rocket motor) at Reynolds number of 3300 (unrealistically low by far, but it was a start). Bagged me a degree. That's all that matters.

Yup. Found it under the photo. Gave you a like just because...

Fun stuff! Yeah, the dreaded sphere is one of those classical problems of fluid dynamics that tortures many an undergrad, usually in a wind tunnel lab class. My Master's research was sponsored by a French rocket company (don't think they exist anymore) and got to brief some folks at ONERA too. The French are whip smart in this area. I remember ONERA's cafeteria being one of the best restaurants I'd been to. One of the highlights of that phase of my career was meeting Werner Dahm, the last of the Peenemunde Germans at NASA MSFC. His group sponsored my Ph.D. research. Was very surreal as a young grad student being invited into his office for technical discussions. But haven't done anything in fluid dynamics or rocket propulsion for the last 23 years. More into electronics and artificial intelligence these days.

Back in the day I remember some fancy cameras that would allow us to peer inside a section of a rocket motor as it was burning to look for a particular anomaly. That was very expensive and we didn't do it that often. Cool videos, though. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schlieren_photography

Another observation: Looking at that thread on FB, Bobby poses the question of why shouldn't Kamado's be like iPhones or cars? Meaning, you'll need to buy a new one every few years or so to keep up with latest "innovations" if you want to live in the KJ ecosystem, which is now apparently designed around the pre-planned obsolescence philosophy. Folks there seem to be eating that up (most anyway). But if I have to spend $2k every 3 years for the latest Big Joe just so it can be more like a 23" KK, why not just buy the KK once for a lifetime? Observation the second: Many of those who complain about the price of a KK seem to have no problem shelling out $750 every two years for a new iPhone, and now apparently $2K for a KJ too.

I think if you read between the lines, what this means is this: We built our own KK by tiling up a ceramic pot, found that it would cost more than a KK to produce and still be a ceramic pot. If we back off to the ceramic pot we can dial down the price, continue to "borrow" other KK features where possible (like 4 level cooking) and call it our own innovation. The new Big Joe is going to be around $1900. A KK 23" Ultimate is $4260. If they can do a 4-level Big Joe with all the other borrowed KK features for $3K their fanboys will eat it up. But it will still be a ceramic pot.

1. I'd be very careful about introducing any heat source when cold smoking. Heat doesn't only travel up. It diffuses everywhere. 2. I've seen no pooling of smoke in the few cold smokes I've done, but am cold smoking again soon so will take a look. 3. Even if there is pooling, this doesn't change the overall flow rate of smoke particles flowing through the system and over your cheese, which is all that matters. Kind of like a stream entering a pond on one end and exiting another. At equilibrium, the amount entering must equal the amount leaving, even if it's a very big pond it is flowing through. I suggest trying the cold smoker as is in the guru port. It works.

For real?? Saw the other upgrades they were doing with the hinge and gasket, etc., and thought "inspired by KK". But are they really prototyping tiles and the top vent too??

You had me at "wild thought". Although...an adapter for that door isn't a half bad idea. If you could mount the cold smoker to that you could still use the guru, and not have to drill another hole in your KK for a cold smoker port. Call it the "utility port" instead of gas port.

Yup, it's got to come out somewhere, and the only place for it to go is up and out.

True! Now if it bolted onto that gas port on the other hand... lol

This makes sense. For COLD smoking, without a heat source, you have only the cold smoker itself driving the flow. Not much to diffuse the smoke evenly, although any jet drives mixing with the medium it exhausts into. Condensation of some vapor doesn't bother me; don't think that would add up to much "loss". Honestly, a small battery operated, slow speed fan might be all you need to drive some circulation for cold smoking.

Same here. Cold smoker is snug enough that it won't tip over unless you accidentally hit it.

Brothers in smoke!

Don't see why that's the case. The only difference is that the smoke will be passing through the flame front which has an opportunity to burn off any unburned reactants. This is exactly what the smoke pot is doing.

It's aerospace engineering, but I did my Ph.D. thesis on turbulence.