hello I'm Lucky Williams owner of Fat Daddy's BBQ Smoke House in Pittsburgh Pa.

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Lucky Williams said:

I'm a new start up business looking to open up in April of this year,I was looking into the Southern Pride dh 6500 electric smokers for my spare ribs and beef brisket, I was wondering about how long the cook time in this unit is for a full load of pork ribs.

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Lucky: 

I think your question is best posed to the folks at SP.  I don't know if the DH 6500 is a new model that doesn't appear on their website--I did see a DH 65--but I couldn't find any info on it and don't want to lead you astray.  From my experiences with other smokers, full vs. partial vs. empty largely had no effect on cook time once it was loaded and cook temp was attained.  I'd recommend contacting them directly:  http://www.southernpride.com/contact .  Good luck.

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I'll throw my 2 cents in on this.  

Actually cooking time is irrespective of brand or model of smoker/cooker.  It's more a product of time and temperature.  Smoke flavor is another variable, but the cook time remains basically the same equation. It's all dependent on temp, method of prep, and time as to what the condition of the meat is (again, not including smoke flavor in the mix as that will absolutely vary depending on pit design and smoke source).

A spare rib or brisket does not know if it's in a WSM or a huge commercial smoker like a Southern Pride.  Time and temp profiles applied to the meat should basically give the same results in any type of pit (assuming the pits can equally hold a given temp and are not prone to drafts, fluctuations, etc....).  Again the smoke method and source type is a huge variable in flavor.  But if you can cook a brisket for X hours at 225* or X hours at 350*, the time would be the same in pretty much any pit if the method remained the same.

A side note would be that Southern Pride smokers are convection cookers, and those tend to "cook" a little faster as you have constant circulation of hot air around the meat surfaces.  It's still "X" temp, but due to the convection the temp remains more consistent than in a non-convection air flow cooker.  If you have ever used a convection oven, they tend to cook faster at any given temp as this is the nature of convection.  Also a lot of brands of convection ovens actually run at a slightly lower temp for convection due to this fact.  Also Southern Pride DH smokers are water smokers which also affects how smoke flavor is absorbed by the meat