Homemade Smoker

I have been thinking about starting to smoke again; it’s been far too long without a proper smoker.  I’ve made due smoke grilling ribs on a Weber kettle, but it just isn’t the same.  I have made and bought all sorts of smokers over the years.  The first few I made from old freezer units with a hotplate for heat/smoke sources.  I experimented with charcoal and wood burning in an offset chamber as well.  They all worked incrementally better as I gained more experience.

Bradley electric smoker

My last smoker though was a Bradley electric.  It had a pretty slick wood biscuit feeder system.  You could smoke for hours; eventually the discard pan would run over.  I smoked a lot of homemade venison sausage and jerky in that unit.  I didn’t care much for all the plastic in build though and eventually the plastic around the temp control broke.

After that mishap, it was just the Weber and smoke/grilling  pork baby back ribs for a long while.  Fast-forward ten or so years; It was time to get another smoker.  I’ve done lots of research and have read posts from one end of the Interwebs to the other.  There is quite a variety of smokers out there: bullet charcoal smokers, barrel and drum charcoal smokers, offset side firebox charcoal smokers, cabinet style charcoal smokers, Kamado, egg, and ceramic  smoker/grills, propane gas smokers, pellet smoker/grills – the list goes on.

Electric Smoker

I had my eye on another electric smokers. This time I would look for something with a more quality metal build.  Theelectricsmoker.com  listed a total of three Masterbuilt smokers in their top 10 list, two of which were #1 and #2.  I did a bit more research and liked what I

saw.  Reasonable price point and the build quality seem to be better than the other electric I had used.   I especially liked the side port for adding wood chips.  The one issue I read about with these smokers is that the digital control units were flaky at best – a lot of people commented on this.  Sure there were likely thousands of people that had no issues, but that isn’t my luck.  I would get a flaky one and I just don’t want to deal with that.  I looked to the analog electric version, but that didn’t have the side port on it; I’d have to open the door to refill.   I was thoroughly disappointed at this point and began to look at others makes/models of smokers.

Propane Smoker

Masterbuilt 340G open

I was set on an upright cabinet smoker.    Given the reviews, I went back to Masterbuilt to take another look and started to look at their propane line.  One of my homemade smokers had a propane burner in and it worked pretty well from what I recall.   The Masterbuilt 340G 40″ ThermoTemp XL smoker caught my eye.  I immediately noticed that   there was a separate firebox door

from the smoking cabinet.  When you open the firebox door, the attached wood chip tray swings out

Masterbuilt 340G 40″ ThermoTemp XL Propane Smoker

for quick/easy filling.  I really like the propane tank bracket on the right side as well.  This was an easy choice for my next smoker.  Sold.  After approximately 2 hours of assembly time and a 3 hour seasoning Saturday evening I was readying to go for Sunday morning.

First Cook