Matt wrote:
> "Reg" > wrote in message
> ...
>
>>For cold smoking the Bradley is a good value, especially if
>>you value your time. It's exceptional in that it can keep a very
>>low temperature. It's very steady all on it's own, without the
>>constant tinkering that most smoker setups require to keep such
>>a low temp.
>>
>>It's very expensive though, relatively speaking. The little
>>prefab wood pucks cost about a buck an hour of running time.
>>You should work out your total costs over time and decide from
>>there.
>>
>>How many hour per week will it get used? I run my smokers,
>>both hot and cold, at least 20 hours per week. Sometimes a
>>lot more. At $1 per hour it would cost me at least $1000
>>per year. That's the cost of a high end grill, every year,
>>forever. Too much in my book. So I use the Bradley only for
>>cold smoking and other much more economical units for hot
>>smoking.
>
>
> Yeah but the real beauty of the Bradley is that it can operate as either a
> smoker and/or oven, with our without smoke. For example, smoking a boston
> butt can take 12-16 hours in my Bradley, but I only apply smoke for the
> first 4 hours when doing a butt. So yes, you may be operating the Bradley
> for 16 hours, but it certainly doesn't cost you $16 for those 16 hours.
> Generally foods will only absorb smoke the first few hours of the smoke,
> after that you're just wasting smoke.
And the magic is where?
Any smoker can do this. The more/larger the wood chunks, the longer
the smoke time. Less = shorter. It's not like the Bradley has some
exclusive "variable smoke time" feature.
> You can get the Bradley wood pucks
> directly from Amazon with free shipping for .75 cents per hour (not $1/hr).
> Smoking a boston butt (4 hrs) for example, costs me $3 in pucks. You also
> have to keep in mind that the Bradley produces some pretty fine smoke, and a
> little bit goes a long way. When hot smoking salmon (one of my favorites) I
> generally only apply 2.5 hours of smoke, even though it is in the smoker for
> 5-7 hours in all. So while you may be operating your smoker for 20 hrs per
> week, do you require smoke for all 20 hours? probably not.
Given that the OP said he'd use it mostly for cold smoking, this
won't always apply, will it?
> I don't find the Bradley any more expensive to operate than any other
> smoker, when you figure in the cost of lump charcoal and/or flavored wood
> chunks used in other smokers. Just buying meats on sale and smoking larger
> batches at a time and you can more than make up for the cost of the wood
> pucks, imho.
Even at 0.75 an hour it's still about 10 times what I spend using
wood chunks. Compare it to an equivalent insulated oven type smoker
such as cookshack, smokintex, etc, that don't need proprietary
supplies.
Plus you have to get the expensive little pucks exclusively
from Bradley. They're patented. If they go out of business
your smoker because a warming oven.
Plus with all it's moving parts it's got reliability problems
that other units never will. I can say this from experience
having had to replace the rather cheaply made and not very
durable smoke generator unit.
I like the Bradley. I use it regularly. I just have a realistic
view of it's strengths and weaknesses.
--
Reg