The Polyscience Smoking Gun has a pretty funny origin story. This is off the cuff, so don’t complain if some of it isn’t true. Hand held keyboard vacuums were popular in the 90s. People in their basements smoking jazz cigarettes like playing on the computer. They eventually realized that it was too much work to manually smoke the hot weed. Someone eventually noticed that if they reverse the direction of the fan in their keyboard vacuum and add a bowl, then blammo, auto-smoker. As modernist cuisine says, “inspired by a different type of smoking.” Ha. Anyway, I wanted something to play with and I like my polyscience circulator, so I got one.

It’s nicely made, its easy to operate, I’ve had some trouble dosing the amount of smoke, but it sure is a fun party trick. The story behind it seems to amuse people too (Aside: that’s not a thing I’m into, or encouraging). I tried to smoke some cheddar first with apple wood, I over smoked it. It took on more burny, acrid smoke notes than anything else. Next time I smoke a cheese, I’ll try it as a block. I think I was just way over smoking things at this point since it looked cool though.

I tried smoking some cheap bourbon next. Over smoked that too. A few days later I smoked some bloody marys I made a pitcher of. Those turned out great. I think the trick is being a bit light on the smoke and not just using it on things that you have lying around to play with it.