Hi there and welcome to the site. Everyone here, at one point in their smoking, was at the place you are in right now so don't sweat it. Like anything, practice makes perfect. Fortunately you have a host of folks here to help you out. Lets brake down a few things that you have mentioned so far. Your temps. You say you smoked at around 250? First off, is that the thermometer that came with the smoker? If so, chances are it is off. Most manufacturers use a simple therm that is suppose to just get you in the ballpark and thats more true if its a cheaper unit. If it says 250, it could be 150 or 350 so a good quality therm is in order. They are not much and worth it. I also suggest either a good probe type or a good dual probe digital therm, like the one Maveric makes. One probe for the food, the other for the smoker temps. Insert that probe into the thickes part of the meat and watch for it to hit the desired internal temps.
Your brisket being too smoky can be caused by a few things. Too much smoke obviously. The smoke coming out of the stack should look like you just blew out a couple matches. You should barely see it. Almost all are guilty of oversmoking when they start out, me included. Do you have the chimney restricted at all? Its a common mistake to try and regulate the temps my closing the chimney vent, but all your doing is keeping stale smoke in the main chamber, thus giving yourself oversmoked food. If this is the case, run the chimney wide open and regulate the temps with the vent on the firebox. You want that smoke to just cruise by the meat, give it a little kiss, then exit out the top. That takes a bit of practice to know how far the vent on the firebox should be open. Also, too smoky of food could be caused by soaking the wood. When you use soaked wood, it more or less smolders, and gives off nasty things including thick smoke. Nice dry wood is what we want and you want it to burn, not smolder away. Woods like Mesquite and Hickory are strong so it does not take much to have the disired effect. On your next brisket, after you get a good therm, get your smoker temp to around 230 degress. Put in your brisket and every 30-60 minutes after the first hour, give it a liberal spray of apple juice. This will help keep it from drying out. A few hours in, your meat may hit a platue, where the temps just sit and down seem to go up at all. This is a good thing, as it is starting to break down the connective tissue. It can last from 30 or so minutes to a few hours. This is a good time to have a beer.
Eventually your temps will start to rise and when the internal temp of your brisket hits 190, take it out, wrap it up real good in a few layers of foil, then a towel and if you have one, place it in a cooler so it can rest and the juices can redistribute. About an hour in there and its ready to eat.
Ribs. Like most on here have said, the 3-2-1 method. Ribs go by feel more or less as the meat is really too thin for a meat probe. Again, smoker temps around 230 degrees. 3 hours on the grates, and again, spraying with apple juice every 30-60 minutes. Then take the ribs and wrap in foil, give them a good spray of juice first and back in for 2 hours. This is where they get really tender. Next, unfoil them and look at em. You should see that the meat has pulled away from the bones. It may be that they are so tender at this point that you can not remove them from the foil without them falling apart. No problem, just uncover them from the foil so they are exposed and smoke for one more hour. Walla, tasty tasty ribs. When you said that your ribs were tough, I would guess that it was due to higher temps. Cooking too fast. Again, a good thermometer is in order. Now if it looks like your ribs are getting done faster than you want, you can reduce this method to say 2-1-1 or even 2-1-1/2. As time goes on, and you get a better handle on how your smoker works, the easier it gets. Believe me I know as I thought it was way too complex when I built mine. And then one day, everything clicked and its been smooth sailing ever since.
Last, post some pics of your smoker, inside and outside shots and the things you have to work with. Im sure someone on here has the same smoker and can offer some tips and tricks or some modifications to maximize it. But again, most important, don't get discouraged.
Hope this helps you a bit. If not, don't be afraid to ask questions. And if you still don't understand, ASK AGAIN. You can even PM if you like with any questions and I will do my best to answer them. Good luck, and glad to have you on board.
