I just cold smoked some hard boiled eggs and was wondering: Does the smoke change the egg's pH and would the smoke increase their shelf life?

This sounds somewhat like 1,000 year old eggs

Which last some weeks, not years.

I would start investigating there.

@Call_Me_Jay…Thanks for your answer and link :)

How did you cold smoke the eggs? After reading the article that @Call_Me_Jay pointed out I am curious. Would soaking the egg in a 50–50 mix of lye (Draino crystals) and salt do the same job more quickly? Or would that result in a toxic mush?

Draino is not lye. It contains lye but isn’t food grade. Please don’t use it for food or soap. You want something that advertises itself as sodium hydroxide. Drain cleaners often contain metals and other material.

There would be no point in putting an egg in a lye solution. There are no natural oils that would need saponification to rid the egg of any spoilage risk. We do it to olives and fish to rid them of fats. The water content and the natural microbes that might be present are your greatest risk. I would suggest vinegar instead. Pickled eggs last longer. Oh, look! Such a thing exists and here is a recipe. http://theunassumingfoodie.blogspot.no/2014/01/smoked-picked-eggs-recipe.html

That recipe is so simple, nice.

It may look like cheating, but Liquid Smoke is in fact liquid smoke. It’s made by capturing smoke from burning wood.