First, Welcome! Based on past experience, I think you'll be adding this website to your favorites. Although the search function has its limitations, you'll be able to find a number of ideas for smoking techniques and other cooking projects. When you search, make sure you do so from the home screen. For some reason, that seems to make for the best search results.
A couple of ideas for you:
1. When you smoke foods using the Bradley, only a portion of the cooking time is devoted to burning pucks. Most people will apply smoke for 4 hours or less, even for a 12 hour smoking project. Overall smoking (as opposed to cooking time) is a matter of personal taste. For larger projects, like pulled pork, I will smoke for 4 hours out of the 14 or so it takes to cook the meat. For babyback ribs, I'll smoke for 2 hours 20 minutes out of the 5 to 6 hours the project will take. For chicken, I wouldn't apply smoke for more that 1 hour. Birds tend to suck up the smoke flavor quicker and too much is way too much. Check recipes to see how long a project will take and how long smoke was applied (adjust smoke to your personal taste).
2. The temp guage on the Bradley is one of its shortcomings. Most here will recommend that you get a remote digital thermometer. I think most here use the Maverick ET 73, which has two probes: one to monitor meat temps and one to monitor box temps. The Maverick has some shortcomings too (the on/off switch is the main one that comes to mind), but it does a good job and will sound alarms when your smoker goes too hot or too cold or your meat temp has been hit.
3. Look into obtaining a couple of metal pucks (bubba pucks) so that you don't have to waste two bisquettes each time you do a smoke.
Good luck, welcome to the forum, and have fun!
