Hi Everyone!
I got my first Bradley smoker last weekend and I'm pumped to put it to use. My Bradley Digital 6-rack is joining a pellet smoker and traditional off-set hardwood smoker, hopefully to add better cold-smoking control.
I thoroughly cleaned the unit before first use, and run three "seasoning" cycles now--exactly like the manual describes. 2 one-hour sessions, and 1 2-hour session. The smoke/smell coming out of even the very first bisquette is so acrid and bitter that there's no way I would use it for food. It the kind of smell that makes you turn your head away and wince like you're in pain. I tried running it without the smoke generator (just the oven) to see if it's burning off residue, but there's no smell when the smoker isn't in use. So I've narrowed it down to the smoke system.
The unit is attached correctly and the conveyor works fine. The bisquettes are correctly seated on the heating element, and they dump off into the water at 20 minutes as prescribed. They are completely black and smell terrible when they're through. The water in the smoke bowl absolutely reeks of bitter smoke. And again, this is after the very first bisquette. So it's not an issue of too much smoke, as I've read can be the case. The vent is always open, too.
All I can think of is that the burner is too hot and the bisquettes are over-cooking, so-to-speak, because there aren't any other variables.
Or, potentially, it could be a problem with the bisquettes themselves. Perhaps they're missing something that keeps them from over-burning? I'm using Bradley bisquettes. I've combed through the forum and haven't seen any problems related to individual boxes of bisquettes, though.
The only similar problems I've found on the forum with smoke have been too much smoke over the course of hours and hours. This is not that. It's immediate, and very severe.
Has anyone had this issue? I would love any ideas or directions to investigate. At this point I simply can't use the unit and I'm burning through bisquettes trying to figure it out.
Thanks, all!