Total waste of beer for sure. One time I dropped like $40 for water pan ingredients for smoked turkey. 2G apple cider, bottle of brandy, whole spices, lemons, oranges, what have you. Smelled incredible while smoking but yielded ZERO taste or aroma in finished product. Oh man I was mad.
In the dry camp too, but have been experimenting with methods to increase humidity in the smoker during the later/cook stage for my summer sausage. I typically run into a problem where the casing starts to dry and IT not climbing. I get better every time but still not got it consistent yet. Damper being closed helped for sure but was not enough. I tried water one time and left damper open in fear of too much humidity but did not do much either. Goal is to do both next time. I think issue I have is I only smoke like 1Kg/2-3lbs at a time so I need a little help. Someone running say 10lbs in the MES might be just fine. Have not run kielbasa yet but doubt I need to do anything since it's much small in diameter.