chokethechicken wrote:Thanks for all of the advice - or should that be thanks for making me spend a lot more than I was expecting!
I shall be sure to get a photo story together for the first time that I use my WSM.
Now, I need to find stockists of the Heatbeads and chunks of smoking wood.
I have owned the Brinkman "Smoke n Grill" and the honest truth, was that it was a great intro into smoking, but is a regret spend. They are more commonly known as the ECB's - El cheapo Brinkmans, because, they will not actually work well out of the box, you need to be prepared to do a little DIY to make them sing. See links below, but for reference, I had to:
1.) Modify the fire tray, so that it had holes in it, otherwise it just ashes up and the fire goes out.
2.) I also added a grate to give about 5cm gap between charcoal and fire tray.
3.) Extended the legs so I could rest the charcoal pit on bricks
4.) Added a weber style airflow control at the top of the unit from a cheap £8 tesco kettle bbq lid
All in all, a great experience but out of the season I owned it for, I got about 4 decent smokes out of 15-20 attempts. It then rusted to peices over winter, even though it was covered and out of the rain. I ended up buying the ProQ, which was amazing in comparisson. Toby has some good prices, and you are way better off getting this for the sake of £70-£80 more. The WSM is another £120 on top of this, so bang for buck the ProQ is definately where I would spend my money. To be clear, I eventually bought the WSM, only because I was looking for consistency in my cooks especially for comp's. However, I still miss the extra capacity my ProQ had when we were having many guests around.
http://www.thesmokering.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=2317&highlight=ecb+modifications
http://www.randyq.addr.com/ecb/ecbmods.html
My review of the ProQ
http://www.bbqfanatics.co.uk/2010/03/proq-and-pork-shoulder.html
..and to think that I was going to buy an iPad 2 instead for my birthday - I hang my head in shame.
