How to Select the Best Smoke Sticks for Your Meat Smoking Chamber

What Are Smoke Sticks Used For?

Smoke sticks are used to hang meat in a meat smoking chamber during the smoking, curing, and cooking process. Smoke sticks can be placed on smoking carts or trolleys and have drilled holes to allow the meat to hang at evenly spaced intervals, allowing for consistent air flow and creating an efficient curing and cooking cycle.

Smoke sticks are commonly used for meats including sausage, ham, and pepperettes, but can essentially be used for any type of meat or fish that needs to be smoked or cured. The type of smoke sticks you need depends on your final application and needs. Innotech Process Equipment specializes in providing high quality smoke sticks for commercial meat processors to meet their production capacity needs.

1. Smoke Stick Material

At Innotech Process Equipment, we use high quality 304 stainless steel for our smoke sticks to ensure they are durable and strong, meeting the weight demands and heat exposure of commercial grade meat chambers. Our stainless steel smoke sticks are available custom or in our standard smoke stick design.

We offer stainless steel smoke sticks in 12 gauge with holes for convenient hook hanging, 18 gauge solid, and ½ inch round bar to meet a range of industry applications and needs.

2. Smoke Stick Shape

Smoke sticks are available in a variety of shapes including tubular, round, “Bell,” “U,” “V,” or “Star” (Y). These different shapes impact the size of the spacing and increase stability and even smoking and curing.

Innotech Process Equipment’s standard smoke stick designs include a “bell” shape and a round design with smooth and deburred edges that are highly polished and easy to clean. Although simplistic, this standard design creates efficiency in the meat smoking and curing process and cleaning process, eliminating small, tight areas that may be harder to access. Because we design and build everything in-house at our facility, we are also able to fabricate any custom shape.

3. Smoke Stick Size

The size of your smoke sticks is determined by the size and capacity of your smoking chamber or smoking cart. The dimensions of your smoke sticks need to be big enough to ensure stability and durability under heavy weight, while also being minimal to meet your space restrictions and capacity goals.

Innotech Process Equipment’s standard smoke sticks are 42 × 1.125 × 1.125 inches in size to create balance, sturdiness, and solidity, ensuring the even distribution of meat products throughout your smoking chamber. Manufactured with a sturdy and durable stainless steel design, they weigh 2.5 pounds and are easy to maneuver and place. However, we have the capability to work with you to design your custom smoke stick to meet your specific sizing requirements for your smoking chamber, cart, or trolley applications.