Every year for a few days sometime before Christmas, Jon Lewis takes over the kitchen at his home in Boothbay. He’s a good cook, and normally shares the cooking with his wife, Sue Mello, but on these particular days, the kitchen counter is stripped of all extraneous objects and lined with parchment paper.

Then he loses himself in the fine art of brining and smoking salmon for the next 48 to 72 hours.

Lewis' has been smoking salmon since 1981, when he lived in Alaska, and caught the fish in the wild.  His smoked salmon has become an annual tradition around the holidays. You could say he's created a monster. Once he gives you a piece of it, wrapped in some cellophane and nestled in a brown paper bag, you can't help but hope he still likes you next year at this time.

Once you've had it, you won't be tempted to buy smoked salmon from a grocery store — or even a seafood market — ever again.

Lewis usually buys anywhere between 30 and 50 pounds of the fresh fish, then cuts it into perfect-sized pieces, marinates it in a special brine, and smokes it outside in his well-used 35-year-old smoker.

This year, he bought 50.3 pounds. That's a lot of salmon — around 150 pieces, according to Lewis. But a lot of people have come to expect a piece of it around Christmas.

Lewis, a marine biologist, said pretty much all the salmon we get these days is farmed, though frozen wild salmon can be found. Freshly caught wild salmon, except for the stuff people catch in Alaska, is a thing of the past. Some local restaurants serve Scottish salmon, but Lewis said there’s really no difference between that and the farmed Maine salmon. “The process of growing the two different salmons is no different. It’s the same product, using the same methods and the same technology, but some people want the Scottish salmon anyway.”

Both the wild and farmed salmon have the salmon-colored flesh. But Lewis said that color is manufactured in the farmed fish. Wild salmon get the color from shrimp shells. “In the farmed arena the flesh is a grayish color, so they’re fed synthetic pellets that contain the same pigment that’s in shrimp shells. They’re the same thing, but one is synthetic and one is natural.”

And Lewis said the farmed Maine salmon is a healthy alternative. “Maine has good salmon, because of the way it’s farmed and the way it’s monitored and regulated.”

Smoking salmon can be a time-intensive task, even using the simplest recipe. Lewis has turned it into an art, and he doesn’t cut corners.

First, he trims the fillets, cutting off any questionable parts, and pulls out all offending bones with needle-nosed pliers, then he cuts the fillets into serving-sized pieces.

Then he mixes up the brine. A typical brine for smoked salmon is simply brown sugar, salt and water. Over the years, Lewis has perfected his recipe for the special brine he uses, and it’s not exactly simple:

(This is for 40 pounds of salmon)

Dissolve 4 lbs. brown sugar in warmed water; Add 2 lbs. salt and pour into a large cooler. Add a bottle of soy sauce, a bottle white wine, a tblsp. sliced ginger, a tsp. minced garlic, 2 tblsp. molasses, a can of frozen orange juice and a sliced orange, 1 tblsp. each oregano and thyme and a tsp. hot sauce. Lewis said in a batch of brine this big, you don’t need exact measurements. “Don’t get too hung up on portions and teaspoons. Just slop it in there.”

Next add a gallon of cold water. And here’s an odd step: “Adjust salt until an egg just floats.” Who knew?

Soak salmon in the brine for 24 to 48 hours, then rinse well (Lewis said he knows it’s rinsed well when no oregano is left on the fillets).

Place on well-oiled smoker racks and pat fillets dry with paper towels, leaving towels on salmon for a bit to absorb any additional moisture.

Mix some brown sugar with a small amount of water and brush on salmon. Put salmon in smoker with no wood chips for the first two to three hours, to dry the fish out, then add wood chips — he uses mostly applewood — and smoke for around 20 hours, adding more chips as needed.

Lewis brushes the fillets when they come out of the smoker to spread the oils evenly, then he wraps them up in cellophane and brown paper bags, and starts playing Santa Claus to his lucky friends.