My digital Bradley is now a couple months old and I've had a little
experience with it. As some of you may recall, I'm not new to
barbecuing, but am now in a situation where real estate is very limited
and I no longer want to fiddle with charcoal or preburn. I have a very
decent gas grill and have built my own IR cooker for sear cooking. The
Bradley is the third addition to my arsenal, and I wouldn't trade it for
anything.

The Bradley arrived in perfect condition. The unit was packaged about
as well as anyone could ask- to me that is just another sign of quality.
It assembled in about 2 minutes with excellent instructions. Recipes
or helpful suggestions are a bit lacking, but since I've cooked a couple
pounds of meat in my life, I had a few recipes of my own to play around
with.

The Bradley is for folks who want to crank out a consistent result. It
takes a lot, but not all, of the art out of smoking meat. It leaves you
with control of temperature and the duration of smoke (independently),
and of course you have complete control of marinades, rubs, mops, brines
and cures.

When we have company, and that's frequently, I had a conflict between
cooking them some good fare and showing them around town. With the
Bradley, you can set it and jump in the car, returning later to
perfectly cooked and smoked meat. When I discuss the following, please
do not consider it to be criticism of the Bradley, but just my own
thoughts of alternatives that "tweak" an already good system.

1) I have a Power Raptor and Competitor controller on order. The
digital controls of the Bradley are good, but lack any logic control.
As with an oven, you pick a temperature and duration for cooking. With
the Power Raptor and Competitor controls, you set a hood temperature and
meat temperature. As the meat temperature approaches the hood
temperature, the hood temperature is reduced until the two meet at the
meat's setpoint. Then, the temperature is changed to a holding
temperature. This will only increase my ability to "set and forget" the
Bradley.

2) Setting of the damper is probably the biggest learning curve for the
Bradley. The damper is what you use to control the humidity inside the
hood. Like the R2D2, there's a water pan in the Bradley. The purpose
of the pan is to catch the smoked out wood pucks and extinguish them.
However, I've found I can toss in some orange or apple juice and flavor
the smoke a tad, as with the R2D2. Once I got comfortable using a
steamy hood to begin with, then drying it out by opening the damper
fully to give a crust to the meat, I was quite happy. I may even
motorize this one day, just for the fun of it.

3) I wish that the heating element (500 VA) was larger. During freezing
weather here, I felt that the Bradley struggled a tad when first loaded
and possibly even later on. I see no reason why I couldn't toss in
either a second element or a bigger one, and might do so. I cannot say
what the power switching capability of the factory controls are, but the
Power Raptor is good for 1500 or so watts, as I recall, so it's a moot
point.

--
-Nonnymus-

Please stop Californicating Nevada

In the periodic table, as in politics,
the unstable elements tend to hang out on
the far left, with some to the far right as well.