Bradley Smoker

[mother hen again]

Thankyou for your replies

[mother hen again]

Ok I don't mind waiting a little while for the digi one....
hope its out before Christmas - would be a nice prezzie eh!

[Iamarealbigdog]

This is on my target for next spring, with respect to the new digital ones, do the cold smoke better or are we still waiting for some sort of mod from bradley

[Ianinfrance]

I'm committing necrothreadia because I've just commissioned my Bradley digital smoker.

Several initial comments.

Firstly. It will set the smoking time digitally in 20 minute intervals, (1 puck lasts 20 minutes). Although it's obvious with hindsight, the instructions don't tell you that the pucks aren't being heated until they are advanced to the platter at the end of the feed plates.

The heating of the oven is carried out by a 500w silica heater bar. I'm still experimenting with using it as it seems that the preset temperatures are only adhered to very roughly. For example when commissioning it yesterday empty, the instructions say "set at 150F - 66C " which is what I did. After about 30 minutes of running the smoker, the oven was at 86C. That's quite a big difference.

The more worrying thing from my point of view (I intend to do quite a bit cold smoking and had hoped to use the unit for dehydrating as well ) is that the lowest settable temperature is 59C (140F) which is a good 10-15C more than I want for drying without cooking.

As it was cold this morning, (7C in the smoker) and I wanted to cold smoke, I gave the "oven" a quick heat up to get it to 22-23 or so. Turned off the oven and went back to check 20 minutes later. It was right up to 33 C. So this aspect needs learning!!

I'm still having some difficulty in adapting canadian/USAian recipes to what I want to do here. We have excellent quality farmed rainbow trout here, and I expect to be smoking quite a bit of it. However almost ALL the recipes I see call for sides of salmon. So how the @£$% do I adapt a recipe for a side of salmon weighing a couple of kilos to a fillet of trout weighing 350g or 250g ?

Similarly I've seen recipes for trout cures calling for a cup of salt to a gallon of water followed by brining for 12 hours or so. Others call for using an 80% brine (274g/l) for just one hour. It's all a bit confusing.

[saucisson]

I saw your post about coming back to the UK next December which triggered my memory and I hot footed it down here to see if there was any sign of a Bradley post from you. I'm pleased to see one

Have you seen the threads on cold smoking in a Bradley by moving the smoker unit away from the "oven" chamber?

Edit: just saw your post in the other thread

Dave

[wheels]

Ian

When I did cold smoked trout I put the fillets in an 80% brine for a couple of hours. The whole trout were about 3-3½lb.

Hope this helps

Phil

[this41uk]

Oh no I've just got the all singing and all dancing 6 rack digital Bradley smoker. Have I just shelled out £500 for a pup (that includes cold smoker attachment) and it's a mongrel.

I will be cold smoking most of the time but I would like to hot smoke with some accuracy.

Tim

[Ianinfrance]

Ian

When I did cold smoked trout I put the fillets in an 80% brine for a couple of hours. The whole trout were about 3-3½lb.

Hope this helps

Phil

All my stuff is finished for the moment, and in the fridge wrapped in cling film till tomorrow, when I can see to what extent I succeeded.

The individual fillets weighed between 220 and 350 g. I had intended to cold smoke 3 hours but as the temperature of the oven was 7 degrees, I suspected it was too cold, so put the oven heater on for a few minutes. This was a mistake as I found that without the cold smoking modification, the temperature of the oven got to 33C with the heater disconnected. I'm pretty confident the bacon and haddock will be fine, but I suspect the trout got a little too hot to be sliced as one could slice smoked salmon Certainly it was a little brittle as I took it out. I'll see tomorrow.

I then put in a second batch of trout fillet to try to smoke cooler, but again it went up to 30C. I'm pretty sure I'm going to have to do some kind of mod - either cardboard box or Jenny's Mwave type chamber.

This4Uk No, if you've got the cold smoker attachement, I'm fairly confident that you'll be able to keep your smoking temperature down except perhaps in high summer.

From everything I'v been reading on the Bradley forum, the Bradley on its own is NOT good at keeping a really tight control on temperature and that's a lot of chat about adding a modification to use a thing called a PID which keeps the temperature to within +-1C. I'm not altogether sure it's needed to be honest. I'll have to see when I do some real hot smoking.

[wheels]

Ian

For cold smoking you could always use one of the CSG's in the bradley?

Phil

[jenny_haddow]

Ian,

I have been cold smoking with my Bradley now for some time using the old microwave casing and some flexi tumble drier tube, all to good effect. No problem with over heating, I put ice packs in the smoking chamber in the summer, and I have never switched on the heating element at all when cold smoking. What I have found problematic is how long to brine my fish, and that is down to personal taste probably. When I follow the recipes it tends to be far to salty so I have cut back dramatically.
Last summer I hot smoked a salmon and some spatchcocked chickens. Fantastic. I do tend to play things by ear when cooking so recipes are merely a guideline for me to fiddle with, but I must say the Bradley has come up with the goods whenever I've used it. Interesting idea re dehydrating, I have a stacking tray type dehydrator, but the Bradley could cope with hung drying if it would work.

HTH

Jen

[Iamarealbigdog]

I spoke with bradley regarding the vast heat varience with the digitals. They admit it is a design flaw. All of the parts are made in China and assembled in Canada. When they figure it all out it was too late and too costly to change over.

There are two mods that are making the rounds. A PID Temperature Control Controller for about $40 on ebay delivered and a small high heat circulation fan.

The addition of the PID defeats the purpose of a digital unit, so my next upgrade will be the stainless steal version.

With respect to the cold smoking, never with the heater on; the biscuit smoke generator will get the unit up to heat, if your is too hot open the top vent all the way.

In winter it should hold about 20(c) / 70(f)

All in all still a great unit....

[Ianinfrance]

Hi all of you.
Thanks for coming back.

Jen first. I read of your 2007 adventures with great interest and I am increasingly coming to the conclusion that something similar to your isolating chamber will have to be the way we go. When we've eaten the four fillets of trout and the two fillets of smoked haddock, we'll no doubt have another smoking session only this time on the basis of a little more knowledge.

I think I'll be following you in using 80% brine, but can I ask you to elaborate a little on how you deal with sugar and what types of fish you use it with? For my first attempt I just used a brine with nothing but salt.

Looking at your set up, I see that you have the generator and the oven fairly well apart. As I don't have your model, I'm not sure whether you had to have a longer cable for the temperature control or not. On mine, apart from the computer type "mains cable" there's also a special "control cable", which is only about a foot long. (more on this later).

Iamarealbigdog. Thanks very much for coming on here. I've had a read through some of the discussions on the "digital" forum and about using PID mods. I found that often what I read there raised more questions than it answered.

1 is the auber PID capable of working on full strength electricity ?

2 They say that they can guarantee +- 1 C 20C above ambiant when cold smoking with the generator close coupled. Well.,.. that tells me I'm almost certainly going to have to put in a cooling chamber or buy the cold smoke generator as Wheel (thanks Phil) suggested. Or maybe both! If I were to make a chamber, then I could possibly put one of those CSGs in that. It's not too costly. Have you ever heard of something like this being done.

3. If I do decide to separate the generator from the oven, I would need to lengthen the control cable. In the discussions on the Bradley digi forum, one of the contributors give a link to a radio shack parts list that is supposed to be able to allow this. the cable is only 6 inches long!!! I can see I may have to do more research.

4. Would I be right in thinking that in the USA there's FAR more interest in hot smoking than in cold smoking? So far I've not really thought much in terms of hot smoking. As an expatriate Brit, I want to make bacon (cold smoked), ham hocks (cold smoked) smoked haddock (cold smoked) and smoked salmon/trout (mainly cold smoked). So far about the only thing I'm pretty sure I want to make hot smoked is smoked mackerel. Although we can get it here in France it's over salted and tasteless. I think it's also likely I'm going to want to make hot smoked trout as well.

Think of me as I take my first tastes of home smoked trout tomorrow!! Or later today in fact.

[saucisson]

I think the non-digital Bradley has a separate power lead and no control lead as such, so moving the two units apart is less of an issue. The PID I got for my boiler can do 250V at 10A, but there are variants designed for low voltage/current applications so it's worth checking both that and the temperatures it's designed to switch.

Dave

[Batman]

Ian, more on my experiences and loads of reading on the Bradley Forum.

1 Pretty sure that the Auber PID will operate up to 240v but the complete unit is about $150! The Ebay PIDs need to be made into working units with boxes, and switches, though there is a guide on the Bradley Forum. Most of the reports suggest that the PID is only really helpful when smoking sausages and hot smoked fish, where overshoot in the temp would be a problem, most other instances the consensus is you can manage without one.

2 I've used the CSG externally and also used it on the bottom of the Bradley, there's much less heat generated so no problems with raising the temperature in the Bradley. I haven't checked what the temp rise is using a CSG in the Bradley but will try and remember to do that next time I do some cold smoking.

3 This is one of the reasons I went for the CSG (and cheaper fuel). I may be wrong but I'm not sure if this is a problem when you are cold smoking as the error you get from disconnecting the temp cable (E1) might only prevent the heater from working. Need to recheck.

The fairly unreliable temperature control of the Digital Bradley is a disappointing and the control unit should have included a PID for the extra control and £20ish cost.