Smoking habaneros and superhots – whats your way?

Hi, today I made my first attempt at smoking habanero peppers. I’ve smoked chipotles before, and those turned out quite well. I wanted to ask for some advice specifically about smoking habaneros and superhot peppers.

I smoked chipotles at around 45–60°C [110–140°F], in three sessions of roughly 3-4 hours each. Between sessions, the peppers stayed overnight inside the smoking chamber, which is built from a metal barrel. After this process, the peppers were really aromatic and needed only a few hours of drying in the dehydrator.

Habaneros however are much less fleshy and I thought they will smoke faster. Today I smoked them for 4 hours under the same conditions (45–60°C [110–140°F]). After taking peppers out, they looked okay but didn’t smell as intensely smoky. Do you guys smoke your peppers longer? Maybe it would be a good idea to dry them in the dehydrator first and then give them a final 1–2 hour smoke?

For clarity, my smoker is different from what I usually see in posts from the US, a classic eastern european scrape metal setup :D. It is a clay brick sort of fireplace connected by a 5 inch metal pipe to a bottom of barrel, which acts as the smoking chamber. I start by lighting a fire to warm up and stabilize the whole system temperature, and when it chokes down, I throw some fruitwood (in my case cherry) onto red-hot charcoal and regulate the airflow to maintain the right temperature.

I’d really appreciate it if you could describe your process for smoking habaneros. That way I can adapt it to my own setup.