Good temperature probe
- Thread starter Fred BW
- Start date
Used my new smoke for the first time today,and couldn't be happier. I did a slab of ribs on an 18 WSM. Kept em around 275,and man did they come out great. I didn't use the meat probe. I will on bigger things though. But there is no doubt this is the best slab of ribs i have ever cooked,and it's only my second time using the WSM. I cooked on a Brinkman for years,and while they always came out pretty good. There is no comparison to being able to hover around a target temperature. Of course reading Harry Soo's method over and over had to have something to do with it also. 
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I hope that wasn't the same model Brinkmann I had, Fred. I thought I was saving a lot of money over the WSM, $129 vs $299. Then I spent about $150 and probably 80 hours time trying to make the thing work properly. I used high temp gasket seal on the firebox, wood stove gasket material around the door, built a fire basket to replace the grate that melted to nothing on the third cook, hand made tuning plates to distribute the heat properly in the cooking chamber, etc. In the end there was just no getting past having a fire box that was about a third the size it needed to be. I ended up buying the WSM the next year and giving the Brinkmann to my niece's husband. At least he's getting some use out of it as a grill.
The Brinkman I had was very popular in the 80's and 90's. Just a pan on the bottom for charcoal. A pan above that for water,and 2 grates and a lid. They only cost 40 or 50 bucks back then. I still have 2 of them which I need to take to the scraper. I cooked a LOT of Turkeys on them,and they always came out great. But they are junk compared to a WSM. Super inefficient, heat gets away everywhere. I/we drank a LOT of beer back in those days,and it was all fun. My brinkmans had been sitting for the last 10 years or so,and I fired one up around 4th of july,and realized it was time to get something better.
You know, you reminded me of my first smoker that I'd completely forgotten. It was a Brinkmann bullet that included a massive propane burner mounted on a tripod stand. It could be used separately to fry turkeys and that sort of thing. That smoker was not a complete disaster. The one I bought a few years ago was an offset that was trying to be too many things at too cheap a price and ended up doing none of them well, especially not smoking. The firebox was too small and with typical KBB ash production, it had to be cleared of ash every couple hours. This was a very unsafe activity.
Anyway, good thing we've both moved on to much better smokers.
Anyway, good thing we've both moved on to much better smokers.