happy birthday creasy doggie -- you're two!

i only hoped it could be this good!

friends at the beach

we hung a split level door for easy access to the smoker and played around with drafting vents on the top to pull the smoke through the pipes all the way through the box.



this is a cold smoke machine as opposed to hot smoke. cold smoke is done at a lower temperature, between 80-90 degrees and keeps for a lot longer than hot smoked goods. there is 12 feet of burried pipe from the fire pit to the box for the smoke to cool before hitting the meat. we used oak and alder wood for the beef and its really smokey flavored. we just stoked the fire all day long and let the fresh air run through at night to rest the meat.


it took about three days for each round of beef to be completely dry. we might have over dried some of it, chewy but good.

smoker assembly

the foundation of the house of meat.


i looks like an out house, but it is packed with meat.



we used these baking racks as shelving, perfect fit and we were able to get a lot of meat in at once.
trimming and cutting the meat took A LOT OF TIME. like way more time than you really want to spend doing this sort of thing. plus we had to do it at night because the flies were so bad. the first time neil and i cut meat we were swarmed in the most disgusting display of winged creatures i have ever seen.

jeryky time

warning. the following pictures chronicle the demise of a 1600 pound bull with a bum hip and how we subsequently turned him into jerky over the last 3 weeks.



it took us less time to skin this year because we didnt gut it we just took the legs off to hang in the unfinished bathroom/meat locker. we cut out the briskets and brined them into corned beef. we cut as much other neck and shoulder meat as we could and left the carcass to the coyotes and mountain lions.

im on the night train