Cherry smoked andouille sausage

@CT -  Thanks man.  I'm not running the AC.  I just don't want to cook the pork.

@henapple - Nope on the vampire, although I made 6 jars of pickled golden spicy beets yesterday. 

I'll post some pics of the construction. 

I just took a link off and cooked it.  Came out great!  Little smokey, takes a couple days for the smoke to mellow, but it's a good flavor.  HOT spice.  Creeps up on ya.  Flavor and texture are very good.  We use andouille mostly as an ingredient, but I'll have to cook up some of this for dawgs.

It really should be dry aged, but it's fine just cooked. 

Here's a raw (post smoke) and cooked picture.

Thanks @vtsmoker

In all honesty, takes a lot of infrastructure to do stuff like this.  And a lot of reading and research.  But it's a perfect match for me - I love challenges and I love making stuff.  So it's a labor of love.  It's easier to go out and buy your own charcuterie, but you can make your own, and if you practice, it'll be better (or at least to you because you can fine-tune to your tastes) than what you can reasonably buy (without searching the world over). 

Plus, you can be creative.  I've made some franken foods.  It's all in good fun, and what better reward than sharing your creations with family and friends.  I give away half of what I make (stuff like this)....and I use the feedback to learn what I can do better (or stay away from!).

Parallel said:

AWESOME!

@Parallel -  I'd love you give you some to try out (being in the world capitol of andouille)...let me know if you're interested.  I work in St. Rose, so I'm close to LaPlace in the day. 

Some details:  

The smoker is made from a frame of MDF.  It's fastened together with glue and pre-drilled screws.  The back is the stainless steeel front to out old dishwasher.  The front door is 1/2" plexi.  Almost all hardware is stainless steel, some exceptions.  The rack inside is cypress with holes drilled for dowels, so I can adjust the configuration any way I want.  The grates are just steel grates.  There's a metal plate the distributes the smoke - 1/8" thick steel or maybe I used stainless, don't remember.

AC - 5000 btu.  cycles a lot, so you need a heat load, which is a problem because the dryer vent wicks off most of the heat.  I only need the AC for fish or cheese.  An insulated vent tube would solve the cycling problem.

Humidity - this is a high humidity cold smoker - it isn't good for dehydrating stuff like jerky.  Problem is, the effluent from the egg is moist from water from combustion.  It cools, and has a high dewpoint.  The AC doesn't help because if there's no heat load.

The top vent is variable.  Always just leave it full open.  Probably a waste of construction effort.

Everything has a gasket - there are a few little leaks, but it works to get smoke into the food.

There's a plexi drip pan on the bottom - made it from 1/2" plexi.  It has foil on it to protect from juice.

In theory - it's something you could make sans AC with a cardboard box.  This one is a little fancy, but it was fun to make.