I got an MES 30 for Christmas along with some other goodies like an AMNPS and I finally got a chance to season the darn thing and do my first smoke the other day. I took a lot of pictures so I will post some up here.
Here is the smoker all shiny and new before I seasoned it, (cell phone camera was a little blurry). At to bottom I have a piece of alumium roll flashing that I cut and bent to try to help disperse the heat more evenly throughout the unit. I did this because I am going to be using the AMNPS for all my smoking so I removed the the entire chip tray and loader assembly completely and the heating element was exposed directly to the racks and I feared that stuff on the right side would cook faster than stuff on the left.
Here you can see the AMNPS sitting next to eh heating element underneath the roll flashing. When I put pellets in the AMNPS with this set up I got TBS for a little bit but before long I was getting white acrid smelling smoke and I wound up pulling the AMNPS out a little before the end of the seasoning process. I thought maybe providing a little more space for heat and smoke to escape the tunnel above the AMNPS might help so I refashioned my roll flashing and loaded up the smoker with a beef bottom round I had bought and rubbed with grape seed oil, Montreal steak seasoning, Rosemary, a little thyme and few other spices before wrapping it up and letting it sit in the fridge over night. I added in a pan of veggies for a recipe I found here on the forums that I wanted to try.
Both configurations of the roll flashing helped provide pretty even temperature distribution between the left and right sides of the smoker so I was pretty happy with it from that standpoint. I loaded up the AMNPS and started up the smoker. When seasoning I had noticed that the thermometer on my MES was running about 25-30 degrees cooler than the two thermometers I had on the racks to monitor left vs. right side temps, so I started out just setting the MES to 195, not wanting it to get too hot. This turned out not to be a problem and I eventually cranked the MES setting up to 225 and it held that nicely and its thermometer was with a couple degrees of my thermometer clipped to the rack.
Unfortunately even with the roll flashing bent back a little bit I still wound up with white acrid smoke before I was an hour into the smoke. Not wanting to ruing the meat I pulled the AMNPS again. This time I deiced to do a temperature check on where the AMNPS was sitting by putting my internal thermometer down there and I found that the area on the right side at the bottom was running in the 300 to 310 degree range even though my internal temps at the level of the meat and veggies were still under 225 at this point. I figured this explained why both sides of my AMNPS wound up burning even though I only lit one.
To solve the problem for now I rearranged the racks, moving the meat rack to the top, veggie pan underneath, and leaving an empty rack on the bottom. This way I could play the AMNPS on the empty rack outside the heat tunnel, hopefully avoiding the white smoke problem. This arrangement worked well (unfortunately I forgot to take any pictures of it) and I was able to get and hour and a half of nice smoke without me having to monkey with it at all... HOORAY!
I cooked the beef until my internal meat thermometer read 135, then I pulled the thermometer and did a couple spot checks in different spots around the meat to make sure it was cooked through. Everything checked out so I pulled everything out.
I put the beef in a tin pan and wrapped the top tight with foil and let it sit for 30 minutes while I simmered the veggies on the stove for 30 minutes or so. I cut the beef into pretty thin slices and served it with some veggies and some of the veggie juices spooned on top for sauce. Everyone enjoyed it and I have a bunch left over in the fridge still.
Not sure what I am going to do about the AMNPS situation. I am thinking that convincing the wife she needs a new mailbox (ours is dented and leaning badly) so I can have the old one to do a mailbox mod would just about solve all my problems.
Thanks for reading! hope it wasn't too boring.
-Barret
Here is the smoker all shiny and new before I seasoned it, (cell phone camera was a little blurry). At to bottom I have a piece of alumium roll flashing that I cut and bent to try to help disperse the heat more evenly throughout the unit. I did this because I am going to be using the AMNPS for all my smoking so I removed the the entire chip tray and loader assembly completely and the heating element was exposed directly to the racks and I feared that stuff on the right side would cook faster than stuff on the left.
Here you can see the AMNPS sitting next to eh heating element underneath the roll flashing. When I put pellets in the AMNPS with this set up I got TBS for a little bit but before long I was getting white acrid smelling smoke and I wound up pulling the AMNPS out a little before the end of the seasoning process. I thought maybe providing a little more space for heat and smoke to escape the tunnel above the AMNPS might help so I refashioned my roll flashing and loaded up the smoker with a beef bottom round I had bought and rubbed with grape seed oil, Montreal steak seasoning, Rosemary, a little thyme and few other spices before wrapping it up and letting it sit in the fridge over night. I added in a pan of veggies for a recipe I found here on the forums that I wanted to try.
Both configurations of the roll flashing helped provide pretty even temperature distribution between the left and right sides of the smoker so I was pretty happy with it from that standpoint. I loaded up the AMNPS and started up the smoker. When seasoning I had noticed that the thermometer on my MES was running about 25-30 degrees cooler than the two thermometers I had on the racks to monitor left vs. right side temps, so I started out just setting the MES to 195, not wanting it to get too hot. This turned out not to be a problem and I eventually cranked the MES setting up to 225 and it held that nicely and its thermometer was with a couple degrees of my thermometer clipped to the rack.
Unfortunately even with the roll flashing bent back a little bit I still wound up with white acrid smoke before I was an hour into the smoke. Not wanting to ruing the meat I pulled the AMNPS again. This time I deiced to do a temperature check on where the AMNPS was sitting by putting my internal thermometer down there and I found that the area on the right side at the bottom was running in the 300 to 310 degree range even though my internal temps at the level of the meat and veggies were still under 225 at this point. I figured this explained why both sides of my AMNPS wound up burning even though I only lit one.
To solve the problem for now I rearranged the racks, moving the meat rack to the top, veggie pan underneath, and leaving an empty rack on the bottom. This way I could play the AMNPS on the empty rack outside the heat tunnel, hopefully avoiding the white smoke problem. This arrangement worked well (unfortunately I forgot to take any pictures of it) and I was able to get and hour and a half of nice smoke without me having to monkey with it at all... HOORAY!
I cooked the beef until my internal meat thermometer read 135, then I pulled the thermometer and did a couple spot checks in different spots around the meat to make sure it was cooked through. Everything checked out so I pulled everything out.
I put the beef in a tin pan and wrapped the top tight with foil and let it sit for 30 minutes while I simmered the veggies on the stove for 30 minutes or so. I cut the beef into pretty thin slices and served it with some veggies and some of the veggie juices spooned on top for sauce. Everyone enjoyed it and I have a bunch left over in the fridge still.
Not sure what I am going to do about the AMNPS situation. I am thinking that convincing the wife she needs a new mailbox (ours is dented and leaning badly) so I can have the old one to do a mailbox mod would just about solve all my problems.
Thanks for reading! hope it wasn't too boring.
-Barret
