Contrary to popular belief, you can build a smokehouse out of wood, and in fact, many are still built that way today. To be fair a lot depends on the size of the smokehouse you are building, if for example you were trying to build a wooden shoebox smoker where everything is so compact then the thing is most likely going to explode. calls
Let’s start from the beginning my first design was much bigger than a shoe box probably best described as a wardrobe and even that went up in smoke so while it is true that you can build a smoker out of wood there are still some things you need to consider
Two things really determine whether wood is a suitable building material for a home smoker:
- How big are you building?
- What temperature are you smoking?
The size problem is quite easy to solve and that is that your homemade smoke house would have to be large enough to ensure that the source of heat and smoke is completely enclosed in fire retardant materials and insulated at ground level. As long as you follow these steps, then you really can build a smokehouse out of something that looks like nothing more than a garden shed.
In Africa, for example, you will still see smoking as part of daily life in coastal towns where the daily staple is fish. Under the African sun, fresh fish can be preserved, but for a matter of hours and without refrigeration, the only way to preserve fish for the market or for days when the villages do not catch anything is to smoke it.
The smoke house will effectively be a shelter with a wooden thatched roof and inside a bare wood fire, how fire retardant is that? It just goes to show that as long as the cabin is big enough and the fire is insulated (it sits on sand), wood is perfectly acceptable.
African fishermen bring me to the next point, which is that smoking temperature is important. Generally, when fish is smoked, it is either cold or hot smoked, the latter being up to a temperature of 80 degrees Celsius. This is far from the highest 110 or 120 one would find when smoking American-style.
Certainly at these temperatures wood, if it’s in a confined environment (and it would have to be to get to that temperature) could easily char.
My own solution to making a small wood smoker was to line the entire interior with fire retardant boards and also leave a 25mm insulation gap between the board and the wood. By doing it this way I have managed to provide all the aesthetics of a traditional wood smoker with the practicality and durability of an American hot smoker.
Plus I’ve made it for a fraction of the price you would have paid for a smoker if you bought it in stores.