looking to buy my first smoker

[cowboy9from0hel]

hi all! im looking to buy my first smoker and i have 2 in mind. the one is a masterbuilt 30 electric smokehouse and the 2nd is a smoke hollow 34 lp gas smoker. does any one have any of these and if you do how are either one? thank you

 

[tennsmoker]

Hello Cowboy, and

 to SMF a really great forum, sorry it took someone a week

to answer your question!!!

If you look under FORUM then Smoking Supplies then Electric smokers there are tons of post about MES 30 and 40,

also look under FORUM then Community then SMF Groups , on the left is Most Popular Groups, then click MES Owners and there lots of post to help you make up your mind,

hope this helps,

al

by the way i have a MES30 (no telling how many members has a MES Smoker) and I couldn't live without it..................

 

[rabbithutch]

Howdy, Cowboy!

Please accept my apologies, too, for it taking so long to answer your post. I've been offline for a few weeks and usually chime in on the sort of question you asked.

I was in the same mode you are a year ago. I really wanted a smoker buy my wife convinced me that I would never have the attention span to keep a fire going for the long periods that some smoking requires. She suggested that I get an electric smoker; so I bought the Masterbuilt 40 that is available from Sam's club for $300. It has served me very well and smoked some delicious meats.

One of the things I found out early on is that the chip smoker just wasn't gonna give me the smoke flavor that I wanted. Someone here suggested the AMazinPelletSmoker (AMNPS) available from fellow member Todd Johnson. I bought one and several different 'flavors' of pellets from Todd and have been extremely satisfied in all counts. Todd is a great fellow to do business with. He understands customer service.

As for the propane smoker, I can't help you but someone else here will chime in sooner or later.

FWIW, not long after I got the MES40 I found a thread on the mini-WSM (I'll leave it to you to search here and across the www for more information about it). The mini uses the Weber Smokey Joe grill and a 32-qt tamale steamer with the bottom cut out. I went to craigslist looking for a second Smokey Joe to dedicate to the mini and found an almost new Weber kettle 22.5". I never found the Smokey Joe so went ahead and used the one I had and made a mini. Now I have a large kettle (great for grilling, indirect heat smoking, et al), the mini which is very economical and will heat for long periods on lone load of charcoal, and the MES40. I tell you all this just to warn you that the world of smokin' and grillin' is addictive.

Good luck on your choice. Keep us posted on your progress.

Oh . . . :welcome1: to SMF !

 

[hkeiner]

I had a propane smoker before I got my MES and found that the MES was a much better choice for me. In addition to the 'set and forget' experience when using an AMNPS and MES, I found that running out of propane in the middle of a smoke, keeping extra propane tanks around for reserve, and frequent trips to get the propane tanks filled were things that I did not miss with the MES. Also, I found that the running costs using propane was a lot higher than using electricity. Just my experience...

There are a lot of happy propane and charcoal smoker users too so you can't go too wrong with some of these types of smokers either.

 

[deltadude]

cowboy9from0hel welcome to SMF, if you browse though 10 pages or more of this electric forum, you will find about 1 or possibly 2 threads asking the same question, "which smoker should I buy"?

You are asking about the MES30 vs a propane smoker, you have several good responses above to consider, so I am not going to add much, however I am a MES40 owner for 6+ years with the same smoker and very very happy.   Having said that I want to point you to a 3rd option.  The 3rd option for a smoker is the WSM (Weber Smoky Mountain) either 17" or the 22", these are a charcoal briquette smokers, and have a fantastic reputation.  If you were to walk around a BBQ competition even though many teams have dedicated wood burning smokers, many of those same teams have as a backup the WSM.  In addition many teams have just WSM smokers which are their primary smoker, in fact several years ago the KCBS (Kansas City Bar-B-Que Society) team of the year used exclusively WSM smokers.  This means they won money and prizes from the Q smoked in their WSM.

Some of the best backyard smokers are the MES or the WSM, this is based on the purchase price point and BANG for BUCK BBQ cooking performance and features.  You can not go wrong with either.

 

[cowboy9from0hel]

thank you for all your replies so far. i still havent gotten a smoker yet but i found a used bradley smoker btst02 for sale for $150 thats 2 yrs old. i put that model in the search and couldnt find nothing on it. does any one have one or know any one that has one to shed some information on this for me?