7 Smokers For Smoking Bacon That Preserve Heritage Methods

You’ve done the hard part. You found a good source for pork belly, mixed your own cure, and patiently waited a week while it transformed in your fridge. Now, all that stands between you and the best bacon you’ve ever tasted is a wisp of smoke.

The smoker you choose isn’t just a piece of equipment; it’s the final step in honoring a time-tested process. It’s about controlling heat and smoke to create a flavor that simply can’t be bought. This isn’t about finding the "best" smoker, but the right smoker for your goals, your schedule, and the kind of heritage bacon you want to produce.

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Oklahoma Joe’s Highland for Classic Wood Smoking

An offset smoker is what most people picture when they think of smoking meat. You manage a small, clean fire in the side firebox, and the heat and smoke draft across the main chamber where your bacon lies. It’s a hands-on, deeply engaging process that connects you directly to the craft.

The reward for this effort is an unparalleled smoke flavor. Burning real wood splits—like apple, hickory, or cherry—creates a complex, authentic taste that’s difficult to replicate with other methods. For those who want to master the art of fire management and produce a truly classic, wood-fired bacon, the offset is the traditional path.

Be prepared for a learning curve. This is not a set-it-and-forget-it machine. You’ll be tending the fire, managing airflow, and dealing with temperature fluctuations. The Highland is an excellent, affordable entry point, but it demands your attention, making it a better fit for a dedicated weekend project than a quick weekday smoke.

Dyna-Glo Vertical for Hanging Full Bacon Slabs

Vertical smokers are all about maximizing capacity in a small footprint. Their upright design is perfect for hanging full slabs of bacon, a traditional method that ensures the smoke circulates evenly around the entire cut. This also allows the fat to render and drip down without pooling on the surface.

The Dyna-Glo vertical smoker is a workhorse, offering a huge amount of cooking space for its price. You can easily hang four or five full bellies at once, making it ideal for processing a whole pig or preparing bacon for friends and family. It’s a practical choice for anyone looking to produce in larger batches.

The main tradeoff is consistency. Less expensive vertical models can have hot spots and are often sensitive to wind. You may need to learn its quirks, rotate the slabs during the smoke, or even make simple modifications like adding a high-temp gasket to the door for a better seal. It gets the job done, but it requires you to be an active participant.

Pit Barrel Cooker for Set-and-Forget Simplicity

The Pit Barrel Cooker (PBC) is a unique and brilliantly simple device. It operates on the principle of a charcoal drum smoker, but its real genius lies in its consistent, convection-style cooking environment. You hang the bacon slabs from hooks and let the cooker do the work.

This is as close to "set-and-forget" as you can get with a charcoal fire. Once you get the charcoal lit and the PBC up to temperature, it holds a steady 275-300°F with very little intervention. For the busy hobby farmer, this is a massive advantage; you can smoke your bacon while you’re busy with other chores.

The simplicity does come with a lack of fine-tuned control. You can’t easily adjust the temperature up or down. The PBC is designed to run in a specific temperature window, which happens to be perfect for hot-smoking bacon. If you want a smoker that can also hold a very low temperature for other projects, this might feel a bit like a one-trick pony, but it performs that one trick exceptionally well.

Kamado Joe Classic for Unmatched Temp Stability

Kamado-style grills are defined by their thick ceramic walls, which provide incredible insulation. This translates to two major benefits: amazing fuel efficiency and rock-solid temperature stability. Once you dial in your target temperature, a kamado will hold it for hours on end, regardless of wind, rain, or cold.

This level of precision is a game-changer for smoking bacon. You can set it to 225°F and have absolute confidence it will stay there, ensuring your bacon is cooked perfectly and consistently every single time. This reliability removes a major variable from the process, letting you focus on the cure and the wood choice.

The primary considerations are cost and shape. Kamados are a significant investment, and their round cooking grates can be awkward for long, rectangular pork bellies unless you cut them in half. But if your goal is ultimate control and repeatability, the thermal efficiency of a kamado is simply unmatched.

Weber Smokey Mountain for Reliable Performance

The Weber Smokey Mountain (WSM) is a legend in the smoking world for good reason. It’s the perfect middle ground, offering the authentic flavor of charcoal and wood chunks with a design that is remarkably easy to control. It’s more forgiving than a cheap offset but more involved than a digital electric model.

A key feature of the WSM is its large water pan, which sits between the charcoal and the meat. This pan acts as a heat sink, stabilizing the temperature and adding moisture to the cooking environment. This helps prevent your bacon from drying out during a longer smoke session.

The WSM is a tool for learning the craft. It teaches you about airflow and fire management without the punishing learning curve of a less-engineered smoker. With two cooking grates, you have ample room for multiple bacon slabs, and its proven, bulletproof design means it will deliver great results for decades.

Masterbuilt Digital Smoker with Cold Smoker Kit

Electric smokers are all about convenience and precision. You load wood chips, fill the water pan, set the desired temperature on a digital panel, and walk away. For someone juggling farm tasks, the ability to produce consistent results without tending a fire is a powerful advantage.

The real reason a Masterbuilt makes this list for heritage methods is the availability of a cold smoker attachment. This separate unit generates smoke without heat, piping it into the main chamber. This allows you to perform a true, traditional cold smoke—a process that is difficult or impossible on most other smokers without significant modification.

You do trade some flavor complexity for this convenience. The smoke produced by smoldering wood chips in an electric element is different from the smoke produced by a live charcoal and wood chunk fire. However, the ability to do both hot smoking and true cold smoking in one easy-to-use unit makes it an incredibly versatile and practical tool.

Humphrey’s Battle Box for Insulated Efficiency

Insulated vertical smokers represent the evolution of charcoal cooking. Think of them as a highly efficient, purpose-built smoking machine. Constructed with double steel walls and thick insulation, they hold temperature with the stability of a kamado but in a space-efficient, cabinet-style layout.

The Humphrey’s Battle Box is a prime example of this design. You can load it with charcoal, and it will run for 12, 16, or even 20 hours on a single load, holding your target temperature with pinpoint accuracy. This level of efficiency saves fuel and, more importantly, time. It’s built for consistency and repeatability on a larger scale.

This is a serious piece of equipment with a price tag to match. It’s an investment for the hobbyist who is regularly smoking bacon, hams, and other cured meats. For those who value absolute reliability and want to minimize the time spent managing the smoker, an insulated cabinet is the ultimate tool for the job.

Cold Smoking vs. Hot Smoking Your Cured Bacon

Understanding this distinction is more important than the smoker you choose. It defines the final product. Your choice here dictates the texture, flavor, and preservation qualities of your bacon.

Cold smoking is the ancestral method. The goal is to apply smoke flavor without cooking the meat. This is done at temperatures below 90°F (32°C) for an extended period, sometimes for several days. The resulting bacon is still raw and must be cooked before eating. It has a silky texture and a deep, penetrating smoke flavor. This requires a dedicated setup, like an electric smoker with a cold smoke generator, or smoking only on very cold winter days.

Hot smoking, the more common modern method, both flavors and cooks the bacon. You smoke the cured belly at a temperature around 225°F (107°C) until it reaches an internal temperature of 150°F (65°C). The bacon is fully cooked, safe to eat right off the smoker, and has a firmer texture. All the smokers listed here excel at hot smoking.

Your decision between these two methods will guide your equipment choice. If you dream of making traditional, silky, cold-smoked bacon, a unit with a cold-smoking attachment is almost a necessity. If you’re after the delicious, fully-cooked bacon you can slice and fry immediately, any quality hot smoker will serve you well.

Ultimately, smoking your own bacon is about reclaiming a piece of your food story. Each of these smokers offers a different path to the same satisfying destination. Whether you choose the hands-on craft of an offset or the automated precision of an insulated cabinet, the real reward comes when you slice into that first slab, knowing you saw it through from cure to smoke.