Steam coils should be placed at the top and also at the bottom of the smoke house. The steam should be turned on until the temperature of house is between 130° and 140° F. After the meat has hung in this temperature about thirty hours, a light fire should be started, by using two or three sticks of wood, and plenty of hard wood sawdust scattered close to the fire, so as to form a dense smoke. It is very essential that dried beef should have a strong smoked flavor. Steam should be kept on the house all the time the beef is being smoked and it will require eighty to ninety hours under these conditions to bring the beef out in the best condition.

Beef can be smoked in a regular house, but it takes much longer and it cannot be handled as satisfactorily as with steam heat in connection with the smoking process.

After the meat is sufficiently smoked the house should be allowed to cool off, and the meat to hang for about twenty-four hours before being handled. It is then ready for packing and shipping. Dried beef thus handled will shrink about 38 to 33 per cent from the cured weight to the smoked weight.

The following test will show the shrinkage on 100 pieces of dried beef hams, also the shrinkage each twenty-four hours after:

SHRINKAGE ON DRIED BEEF.

100 pieces, cellar weight1,184 lbs.
After smoking 85 hours812 lbs.
24 hours later806 lbs.
24 hours later793 lbs.
24 hours later781 lbs.
24 hours later762 lbs.
24 hours later755 lbs.
24 hours later750 lbs.

Packages.

—The packing of meats for shipment is best done in open type barrels or crates. Fancy meats should not be packed to exceed one hundred pounds per box so as not to injure the shape.

Skipper Fly.

—The skipper, the larvae in the life cycle of a fly is the one pest needing close watching in a smoke house. This fly does not attack either green or salted meats, but will select a piece of pork ham in preference to a beef ham. The fly lays an egg which hatches to a larvae, and this is the disgusting form in which it is the enemy of sweet-smoked meats.