DJDDay
Active member
Full disclosure: This will be a pretty comprehensive review that will be updated over the coming year as I gain more experience using it. I bought the Smoke Daddy Magnum PIG to modify my Traeger Pro 780, which is a fantastic pellet grill and highly recommended - that offers little to no smoke "flavor" out of the box by itself. Having come from a Kamado-style smoker (and prior to that, a stick burner), I began to miss that heavier "bacon-like" smoke that you can only get from burning actual wood stick/chunks/chips. Did a lot of research and in the US at least, the Smoke Daddy line of cold smoke generators seemed to be the best bet. They've been on the market for well over a decade, is still ran by a family business based out of Gurnee, Illinois, have a large community of users who have perfected the do's and don'ts while using it, and it seems fairly well machined. Additionally, it appears that their patented design utilizes the Venturi effect the most efficiently by placing the oxygen intake and smoke outtake tubes at the top of the combustion chamber, while allowing the wood combustion to happen at the bottom as gravity draws the embers down. Smoke wants to rise naturally, as it is (usually) lighter than the surrounding air, so the designs that draw from the bottom don't appear to work as well as this IMHO. Other cold smoke generators that I considered was the popular Bella’s as well as the Smokai – both of which have their Venturi effect drawn at the bottom of the chamber with combustion happening above. Bella’s was too large/awkward to fit on the Traeger Pro 780, and Smokai wouldn’t answer my email requests for product info, so they lost a potential customer. By contrast, Smoke Daddy answered the phone almost immediately and answered my questions – just a real nice bunch of people.
I chose to buy from Amazon because I wanted this overnight, and buying direct from Smoke Daddy was noticeably more expensive. They've had a distribution agreement with Amazon for some time, so it's covered via their warranty regardless. First, let's get into the quality of the parts: these are all fairly well machined (mostly anodized aluminum) parts. While others have said "I can just build this myself out of stock fence parts", I neither possess the tool and die skills nor the wherewithal to craft something like this by myself, so for me - to pay to have someone to do this for me, package it, and cover it with an alleged lifetime warranty, it only makes sense to buy it premade. That said, for those potential buyers who worry about where their products are made or sourced, know that Smoke Daddy now sources many parts from China these days. Both combustion chamber caps (top and bottom) were made in China, so there's "that". But, with "that" out of the way, the parts seem decent. The actual metal Venturi tube was stamped "Kaiser Aluminum", and a little Internet research indicates that this is an American company based out of Lake Forest, California. They've provided aluminum parts to the aerospace, packaging, automotive, and other markets for well over 70 years. The other parts (external threaded aluminum main chamber smoke tube, the conduit bolts, washers, etc) - no clear idea where they're from. Same for the main combustion chamber. So, most likely China.
The provided fish-aquarium style adjustable air pump does indeed do the job, but be aware - this is yet another part sourced in bulk from China (they're all over Alibaba for $1.50 USD - $5 if bought in bulk). Translation: these are extremely cheap air pumps. As far as noise, on low it's pretty quiet - over the noise that my Traeger Pro 780's convection fan makes, it's inaudible. Crank it up to the 50% mark, and things start to get noticeably louder. On 100% high, it's very noisy, but again - assuming you're doing a hot cook with your pellet grill's fan running, you may or may not even notice it. For a cold smoke with the grill off, you will absolutely hear it purring away if it’s on high, but I ran mine between 50%-70% during an initial “cold smoke” of my thick ribeye steaks prior to grilling.
I chose to buy from Amazon because I wanted this overnight, and buying direct from Smoke Daddy was noticeably more expensive. They've had a distribution agreement with Amazon for some time, so it's covered via their warranty regardless. First, let's get into the quality of the parts: these are all fairly well machined (mostly anodized aluminum) parts. While others have said "I can just build this myself out of stock fence parts", I neither possess the tool and die skills nor the wherewithal to craft something like this by myself, so for me - to pay to have someone to do this for me, package it, and cover it with an alleged lifetime warranty, it only makes sense to buy it premade. That said, for those potential buyers who worry about where their products are made or sourced, know that Smoke Daddy now sources many parts from China these days. Both combustion chamber caps (top and bottom) were made in China, so there's "that". But, with "that" out of the way, the parts seem decent. The actual metal Venturi tube was stamped "Kaiser Aluminum", and a little Internet research indicates that this is an American company based out of Lake Forest, California. They've provided aluminum parts to the aerospace, packaging, automotive, and other markets for well over 70 years. The other parts (external threaded aluminum main chamber smoke tube, the conduit bolts, washers, etc) - no clear idea where they're from. Same for the main combustion chamber. So, most likely China.
The provided fish-aquarium style adjustable air pump does indeed do the job, but be aware - this is yet another part sourced in bulk from China (they're all over Alibaba for $1.50 USD - $5 if bought in bulk). Translation: these are extremely cheap air pumps. As far as noise, on low it's pretty quiet - over the noise that my Traeger Pro 780's convection fan makes, it's inaudible. Crank it up to the 50% mark, and things start to get noticeably louder. On 100% high, it's very noisy, but again - assuming you're doing a hot cook with your pellet grill's fan running, you may or may not even notice it. For a cold smoke with the grill off, you will absolutely hear it purring away if it’s on high, but I ran mine between 50%-70% during an initial “cold smoke” of my thick ribeye steaks prior to grilling.
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. Like othe mods, the expensive ones have a limited audience.
