Been reading just joining

Welcome man! Lots of good info on here. Practice,practice practice!!

Welcome to SMF!

 The butts and loins are large hunks of meat that you smoke till done. Just like a brisket.

They are more forgiving than ribs or chicken where it doesn't take long to go from done to over cooked.

i have used the MES since they came out with the first MES 40 ' and i have found that the first thing you need to do is buy a couple of good remote thermos  that you can test in boiling water for accuracy,

 The ones in the mes are known to be anywhere from 0 - 20 degrees off in either direction.

 Once you have something known to compare the read outs to then you can dial in the cooking temps on your unit,

The one i have now reads 15 degrees higher than it actually is. So i know to run my temp at 250 to get a 235 cooking temp.

 I would use the 3-2-1 method of cooking ribs till you get the hang of it .

Chicken is great coming out of the MES as long as you either use a grill / broiler or fryer to crisp up the skin after smoking it.  The unit will not reach high enough temps to have crispy skin .

Yeah ribs areally something that needs a Lil practice. I was invited to a friend's and he was smoking some ribs and when it came time to eat they give me a knife!

  Good evening and welcome to the forum, from a rainy and chilly day here in East Texas. Lots of great people with tons of information on just about  everything. 

Gary