The MES40 mine is first gen SS, the recovery time is enormous. The initial warm up is the same. So when you preheat, get to temp, and throw open the door, thow in the meat and insert the chip tray, close the door and its another huge reheat. Its almost a s lkong it seems as the preheat took.
I always wait on the chip tray till the meat is in, looking for smoke at those magic 100 to 150 IT range. Hate to smoke it while preheating. That being said, I also bought a cold smoke unit with the smoker and have it installed. I have been using it as a smoke extender so I do not need the re-loader. It does go thru the shells and chips pretty fast though. I have read were some are using an adjustable reostat on it and seem to be experiencing a lot of sucess in lengthing the duration of the smoke. I hate messing with anything electrical so have not tryed it yet.
I have only used this a few times, right after I got my new step my Pop fell and have not been smoking as much while looking after him. I have thought about maybe using some high temp sealer around the bottom of the top sealer fin in the smoker. Let me show you.
This is the internal tower which holds the shells/chips in the center. the fin which runs around it, sets down upon a metal lip in the Cold smoke generator, sealing the smoke chamber from the upper chamber allowing the smoke to migrate into and thru the MES40 instead of just comming out the lid of the smoke generator. Works fine, its a low tech solution. Its engineered so that while maaintaining the perfect contact to also allow a screened end on the bottom to set upon a heating coils thereby heating the shells/chips. The problem as I see it is, its so hot and on the heating element. Hence allowing to much heat on the screen while pre-heating the whole chimmney.
I was thinking of maybe adding a bead of heat resistant silicone gasket material to the underside if that fin. Thereby raising the entire chimney slightly off the heater coil. But since I have not had smoker time, I have not had experimental time either.
It seems a possible easy fix for the problem. Another would be the reostat to reduce the element wattage.... but I so hate electricty. Its like a snake , it lays in the grass and waits for you! It was the hardest part of my Sub Quals in you younger life. Some chief used pnuematics and hydraulices to explace electricty to me or I would have been canned.
Now there is an electrical full power line-up! Analog, 800, and a 1200 watt........you can see the edge of a old pipe pit too. Bucket is full of last years pecan shells, silly bags of chips. I assure you there is an AMPs in one of those awaiting its next use and in the garage kitchen behind it, is boxes of bags of all the pellets, propane for the weedburner, crab boiler, and burner for the jambalaya pot.
BTW I am actually thinking of putting a huge cornerstone brick in the MES40 as a heatsink. The heatsink will weigh as much as the MES40 though. Hate to take a chance on stressing it out.
