I'm finally about ready to buy my smoker. I am going to be focused on doing venison snack sticks and this has me leaning toward and electric smoker that is capable of lower starting Temps. I have heard pellet smokers are very nice but not sure I want to go that route. I do want to be able to do such things like brisket and ribs as well. Would I be fine with the electric still? Or pellet is just fine to do snack sticks and all others.
Hi there and welcome!
Your focus is on venison snack sticks (sausage basically).
With your focus, the pellet smoker gets ruled out because it can't do the lower temps needed for sausage/sticks. The proper process is to start at like 100F degrees and bump up the temp until you hit a smoker temp of 165F. You do this to keep the fat from melting out. The pellet grills cannot do this with a low temp of like 180F or so.
Next, you want to do ribs and briskets. Well the
Masterbuilt Electric Smoker 40 inch (Digital not analogue and known as an MES40) would be the size you want unless you want to cut your rib racks and briskets in half and go for the much smaller 30 inch MES30.
I am an MES40 owner and it sounds to me like that is the smoker for you.
Now lets talk a little wisdom here and an alternate approach you may want to consider :)
The best MES40 you can get is a used one for free or for like $40/$50. Check Facebook and Craigslist and such.
You then do a simple rewire (cut ends off 4 wires, splice to make 2 wires) and you buy a $150 PID Controller to use with the smoker.
The PID controller will hold your smoker temp dead on constantly or within 1-2 degrees. No temp swings, which is super important to avoid with sausage!!!
The way this works is after the MES smoker rewire you plug it into the PID.
You plug the PID controller into the wall for power.
You drop the PID thermometer into the smoker so it can measure temp.
You turn on the PID and and enter your temp.
The PID will feed power on/off to the MES smoker until it reaches the set temp and will hold it there. Done.
This takes any ol used MES and makes it 50x better than anything
Masterbuilt makes period.
It's like turning a golf cart into a Ferrari.
I've thrown a lot at you here so ask any questions you have but in short, rewire or not, I think the MES 40 is your best bet. Academy is going to have your best deals right now with the holiday sales coming up if you want brand new. The fewer the "bells and whistle" the better... yes I said the fewer. Most of the features are not actually useful even though they seem like the bees knees :)