I've been grilling for many years and have always been interested in meat over smoke and fire. This past year, my wife gave me a beautiful Weber Summit grill with a built-in smoker box. I started experimenting with adding smoke to my grilled food, then moved on to slow smoking ribs, brisket, and chicken with low indirect heat. The results were pretty decent (but not as good as I thought it should be), but took a lot of effort. The smoke only lasted about 45 minutes, and the weather affected the temperature, so I had to monitor temps with my Maverick pretty closely. The last time I smoked some chicken thighs, a thunderstorm blew through the area, and my temp dropped from 185 to 130 in about 15 minutes. I finally had to fire up a second burner to get the temp back up. By then the storm blew through, the sun came out, and I had to cut it off 10 minutes later. I still enjoyed the whole experience, and the chicken came out very good, but I was limited to smoking/experimenting only on the weekends since it took a lot time and effort to make it happen.
I started researching smokers and looked at many different brands and styles. In my travels, I came across Cookshack. I had never even considered an electric smoker, and the more I read, the more I wondered if it was possible that I could BBQ during the week instead of just on the weekends when I had entire days to devote to smoking.
I kept reading and lurking on the forums and came across the articles by Dave Naas on the CS vs. the Bradley and the Smokin Tex (http://charcoalstore.com/kb/). Now I was hooked! I looked at the quality construction, ease of use, and the many rave reviews and comments on this forum, and decided this was something the whole family could enjoy. Especially me!
Fast forward to yesterday around 2:15 when the UPS man wheeled my 009 down the driveway. I was just leaving to go back to work, but when I saw the UPS man, I suddenly had a change of plans.
So after unpacking, setting it up on the table I built for it this past weekend, and checking out all the accessories, I ran it last night for six hours with 6 oz. of hickory at 200 degrees.
Tonight, I prepped a pork butt with a coating of olive oil, and a half and half mix of CS Rib Rub and some homemade pork rub I like to use, wrapped it and put in the fridge overnight. It's going in the smoker first thing tomorrow morning w/ 2 oz. of apple wood. I also made up a batch of Eastern North Carolina BBQ sauce.
Once the kitchen stuff was done, I went outside and foiled the bottom of the 009 and roof of the wood box (I remembered to punch the hole in the bottom and put the pan underneath, thanks to the collective experiences of the forum), setup the thermometer probes, weighed the wood chunk, added the wood chunk to the firebox, checked the batteries in the thermometers (yeah I'm a type A...
.I've thoroughly enjoyed reading all the great info here on the forums, especially the 101s and the pinned topics with all the things a newbie needs to learn. I'll try not to be so long-winded next time, but as you can probably tell, I'm really looking forward to some great 'Q in my future. Can't wait till morning to get the pork butt going!
And thanks to everyone for freely sharing all this wonderful information!
