My first Smoker!

I’ve wanted to get into meat smoking ever since I started grilling, or when I started to learn how to grill well I should say.  So, after much research I decided to finally pick up the Brinkmann Gourmet water smoker over the weekend.  Now, I know what some of you are thinking right now, that I should have gone with the more popular Webber smoker, which in truth I most likely will in the future.  However, I figure that for the price, (I picked this thing up at Lowes for under $60 plus several discounts), that this thing wouldn’t be a bad place to start.  I do like it and it's not a bad little smoker, it went together simply enough, maybe took 20 minutes tops before I was ready to start up my charcoal, and it’s pretty straight forward to use.  Sure it doesn’t have any way to regulate air flow (as of yet anyway), but I’d be lying if I said it didn’t turn out some pretty good ribs over the weekend. 

Now first things first, this might be obvious to some and I thought that I knew what I was getting into, but using a smoker is not anything like using a grill to do meat smoking.  On my grill I will usually use indirect heat to barbecue ribs or pork shoulder; I will add wood chips in a smoker box to add that smoky flavor.  More often than not I will cook at a temperature between 300 - 350 degrees, which to me was pretty low.  With the Brinkmann I think the highest temperature I reached in the 6 hours of smoking was maybe 225, and that was with a fully loaded pan of charcoal.  Also, while smoking on my grill I would continually add chips to produce smoke through the entire process; this does not go over so well in this smoker as you will end up with meat that tastes more like smoke than meat.  This might go over well with some, but I believe that smoke is a flavor enhancer more than a flavor unto itself. 

Over all I will still need some time to play with the smoker.  I am looking forward to making my first mods this week, which would be installing some vents above and below to help control air flow, as well as adding a basket to suspend the charcoal to help increase the temperature range.  I wouldn’t mind adding a temperature gage or two, maybe one in the middle and one up top that actually gives a temperature instead of a range of 'Low, Ideal, and Hot'.  But as I said, for under $60 it’s kind of hard to beat.  I’ll keep you all posted on how the mods work and what kind of meat I’m able to produce with my new Brinkmann smoker.