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My name is Jerry and I lurk here. There is a lot of good information
passed around here. And some interesting recipes too. Thanks.

I've been BBQing for years. I started out minding the fire for making
the coals for a large open pit BBQ under a shed. "Put a couple of
shovels full right there, lad." Every other Saturday, all spring and
summer, our closest neighbors (half mile away) had a "Musical".
Friends, relatives, and musicians came from miles around to eat, play,
and nip at the shine, and dance a few Jigs.

60 years on, I still have to have my BBQ'd ribs and brisket, with an
occasional pork butt thrown in.

I'm in the market for a simple to use BBQ setup that I can take on the
road. I've retired and I travel in a 5th wheel for months at a time.
I have just spent some time on Goggle groups researching past posts
here on the pros and cons of a Bradley Smoker, which seems to fit my
criteria for an easy to use, portable BBQ unit that will be used a
couple of times a month.

After all my research there are some questions that I haven't been
able to answer satisfactorily.

1) Aluminum Pucks? Obviously I'm missing something here. I don't
seem to understand how the feed mechanism works. Why do you waste 2
pucks each use?

In a nutshell; the puck burner plate is several puck widths away from the
puck feed tube. The way the puck advance mechanism works, the pucks push
each other. One by one, the wood pucks drop down the feed tube, and then
are pushed forward by a small mechanism that is timed at 20 minute
intervals. The first puck is dropped down, then pushed forward, then
another puck drops down and again is pushed forward, and so on. It takes
several pucks feeding through in order to push the pucks out onto the burn
plate. Once the supply of pucks is exhausted, the puck advance mechanism
continues to advance every 20 minutes, but if there are no pucks to push,
the whole process stops. Because the feed tube is several puck widths away
from the burner, when the supply of pucks is gone, the last couple pucks
don't actually make it to the burner plate because there are no pucks left
to push them. They remain next to the burner plate where they get hot
enough to smolder a bit and are wasted. Say you want to smoke something
for 2 hours, if you were to only load in 6 pucks (each one burns 20 minutes)
you would actually only get 1 hr and 20 minutes of smoke because the last
two pucks wouldn't ever make it to the burn plate. Instead they would
remain next to the burn plate and would partially smolder and be wasted. So
the way the Bradley is currently configured, if you want to smoke for 2
hours, you really have to load in 8 wood pucks, one or two of which would be
simply be wasted in the process. This is where the aluminum pucks come in
handy and save you pucks. You load three of them on top of your last wood
pucks, they then feed through pushing all the wood pucks through. When all
the wood pucks are burned, only the aluminum pucks remain on and next to the
burner. No half burned wasted wood pucks. This makes sure all the wood
pucks are burned completely and then extinguished into the water bowl as
intended. It prevents you from having to load extra wood pucks which would
just get wasted.


2) As I understand it, even though it is a digital controller, it is
still basically an on/off setup with no PID control. When it reaches
the set point it kills power and then after a temperature drop of
several degrees it turns on again?

Correct. Instead of the Digital Bradley, I would recommend going with the
Original (non-digital) model and then using a home-built or ebay bought PID
controller. This method will cost you the same as a Digital Bradley while
giving you better, more stable temp control. There are now plug and play
PID's available on ebay designed for the Bradley. Or there are plans
available on the net for building your own PID for the Bradley.



3) If this is the case, what kind of fluctuations are we talking
about?

4) Is the Digital model's temperature controlled better than the
Original?

The Original simply has a slider control to control the heat. When the knob
is to the left, it makes not heat, slide it to the right, it makes heat.
You have to adjust it as the process goes along, but once the temps
stabilize, not a whole lot needs to be done. The digital model uses the
same heating element, but it has a built in thermostat that will turn on/off
the element to control the heat. But again, it is not PID, and because of
the nature of the heating element the temp does fluctuate a bit, more than
some folks prefer. While probably a step up from the Original Bradley when
it comes to temp control, it is still far from perfect. That is why I still
would recommend an Original Bradley with a PID controller for a truly set it
and forget it smoker. You can even get programmable PID controllers that
will alow you to set variable time/temps for the ultimate control.


5) Is temperature control in the original a problem?

No, I've been using my original Bradley for almost two years now. I do
everything from cold smoking cheese for 1 hour to several briskets at a time
for 20 hours. I do over night smokes a lot for things like briskets and
butts with my original with no problem. Like I said, once the temps
stabilize there isn't whole lot of messing with it. I'm happy with my
Original as is, but I will be picking up a PID in the near future. I have
two small children, a 1 year old and a 3 year old and it can be a bit of a
chore tending to the smoker while also keeping an eye on them too. So to
make my life a bit easier I'm going for a more set it and forget it approach
by adding a PID to my set up.

And finally,

6) Anything I should know about that I haven't asked before I pick up
one of these units?

Some people will try to talk you out of the Bradley saying that the wood
pucks are too expensive, etc... but it's really not. All smokers cost $ to
operate and I find the Bradley very reasonable. Where I get my wood pucks,
it costs me $1 per hour of smoke to use my Bradley. When I'm smoking a
couple butts or brisket for instance, it may take 12 to 16 hours in the
Bradley, but I usually only use smoke on them for the first 4-5 hours, after
that it is just heat, no smoke. It's not like you have to smoke/burn pucks
the whole 12-16 hours. That's another benefit of the Bradley, you can
control how much or how little smoke. When you aren't burning wood pucks,
the Bradley acts just like an oven.

I would also think long and hard about picking up a Maverick ET-73 smoker
thermometer for use with your Bradley, along with the aluminum pucks. Check
ebay for the aluminum pucks, they are all the same so go for the cheapest
price. And again, I'd opt for three of them.

Thanks, in advance.
Jerry Osage


good luck,
Matt