Hello from North Vancouver :)

[csubi]

Hello all,

I got into smoking about 2 years ago, by building my own smoker out of a Beer Keg.  (pics attached)
Just got a new 6 rack added to my collection, and cannot wait to put it more miles on it. Bought the Metal pucks on eBay, cover on Amazon, and the new Maverick Thermometer as well.

I did make a smoked whole chicken, which turned out awesome.  Found the recipe on here.  However, I found that it took a long time to heat up, and once I opened the door to baste, the temp dropped significantly.  Is this normal?

[iceman]

Welcome to the forum csubi.
Nice looking keg smoker and Shepard  :D
Poke around a bit on the forum. Folks have a few cures for temp recovery posted.

[tskeeter]

Are long preheat times and significant temp drops normal when you open the door normal?  Yes, I'm afraid so.  Your Bradley is designed around a low and slow smoking concept, so it only has a 500 watt heating element.  The puck burner adds another 125 watts of heating capacity.  In the Bradley world, patience is truly a virtue.

So what do you do? 

Make sure you use boiling water in your puck bowl, so cold water isn't absorbing all the heat output of the smoker. 

Put a foil wrapped brick or two in the bottom of your smoker.  Once warm, the bricks act as a heat sink.  So the temp recovers faster when you do things like opening the door.  On a cold, windy day, when I was smoking a heavy load of meat, I heated the bricks to 400F in the oven before moving the hot bricks to the smoker to help bring the meat up to temp more quickly.

When you preheat, heat to about 25 degrees higher than you want to smoke at.  This makes your smoker cabinet a little like a heat sink.  Don't forget to reduce your temperature set point when you put the meat in your smoker. 

Use a remote thermometer, so you can monitor the internal temp of what you are smoking without opening the door. 

Keep the puck burner on after the smoking portion of your cook is done.  It's only 125 watts, but that's a 25% increase in heating capacity.  (This doesn't seem to affect puck burner life expectancy.) 

Last, but not least, the impatient and Tim Taylor types who hang out here have been known to modify the heating system in their smokers to boost the heat output.  This can get a little expensive because the Bradley wiring is marginal when you add significant heating capacity to your smoker.  Most who do this opt to use an appropriately sized PID temperature controller to control the modified heating system.

[csubi]

Thanks for the replies guys.

Awesome tips to help me with my new smoker.  Really appreciate it.  I do love to tinker, but I'm going to learn how to cook with my Bradley stock.  I'm very much ok with low and slow.

C

[seb bot]

Hey csubi, welcome to the forum from Richmond!

tskeeter has pointed you in the right direction as far as helping with heat recovery and such, and I would just add that if you can, try to set your smoker up somewhere out of the wind... I find the wind really seems to suck the heat out of it!

p.s. your homebuilt keg smoker looks pretty cool too! :)

[Quarlow]

Welcome to the forum neighbor.

[dave01]

welcome to the forum