I've owned this smoker for 3 years and have been very happy. I've cooked ribs, brisket, picnic shoulder, boston butt, and salmon and they all have come out fantastic. Using the Bradley is very simple. I've tried smoking the traditional way but for the occasional weekend smoker keeping the heat low and slow is nearly impossible; the constant monitoring of heat and fuel for 6-12 hours took out all the joy of eating. Bradley is the way to go!
Besides making sure there were enough "pucks" of wood, you have to check the water pan to make sure it doesn't go dry. If you're smoking something fatty like a boston butt, I would recommend tossing out the oil and ash that drips into the pan after 3 hours or so and add more water. Other than that it's set and forget.
We don't have a much of a selection of wood where I live (mesquite is king) so it's great how easy it is get different woods to try and mix them like the pros do. It's not expensive to run, Bradley recommends that you only need to smoke the food for only half the total time it takes to cook your food, so if it takes 12 hours to finish, you only need 6 hours worth of pucks.
The only reason it doesn't get five stars is because it doesn't get hotter than about 250 degrees. If it had a more powerful heating element it would have greater versatility and you could cook perfect chicken with crispy skin, or use it during colder outdoor temperatures.
Side note: Just as important as the smoker is the rub and sauce. The best cookbook for BBQ I've found is Peace, Love, & Barbecue: Recipes, Secrets, Tall Tales, and Outright Lies from the Legends of Barbecue. It gives you the REAL award winning recipes, not the common "based on" recipes from some well-known BBQ pros. In addition, there are valuable hints on prepping and cooking that most other books don't give and a great guide that will help you develop your own signature rub.
Nearly caught my house on fire with this product, and please do note I am not alone, especially lately check out the customer photos and their dates. Either this product is too difficult to use safely for most consumers, or I had a defective unit. I really believe it was the latter, but if it's the former, you're going to have a hard time keeping this product clean enough to be safe.
I bought this smoker in July (five months ago). On the fifth use, it inexplicably overheated, melting the door seal. There was no fire that time. Bradley sent out a replacement door seal, saying that I must have kept the vent closed, but they'd help me this time. I hadn't kept the vent closed, and said I was concerned it was a defective unit and a fire hazard. They continued to assert it must have been a closed vent. I crossed my fingers I had just not noticed my error.
It took me nearly 2 hours to replace the door seal, a dirty job that made me swear to myself I'd maintain the smoker perfectly so there would be no potential of user error going forward. Every single time I removed every single removable part and steel wool clean it. I wiped down the sides each time, and removed any obvious grease.
Five smokes later and my wife looks out the window just in time the whole thing was ON FIRE. I unplug it, douse it with water, and finish the turkey breast (not a greasy pork roast mind you, a turkey breast) in the oven.
I call them up, assuming the fire was proof I had a defective unit that would be quickly replaced. I figure, hey, they had a record of the first incident, so it shouldn't be much of a fuss. Ahem no.
After a week of chasing, I finally got to talk to Brian, who is in charge of "fire incidents." I explained the situation, the previous problem, my exact experience and use of it, and he said it's because of user error that I hadn't cleaned the smoker thoroughly enough, and too much grease is why it caught fire. Then he offered me a "deep discount" that he didn't actually reveal.
I tried to engage him in simple logic. If you're saying this unit, that has caught fire, is NOT DEFECTIVE, and I'm saying that I've used this as responsibly as possible, what you are saying is either A) I am lying to you about how I maintained the product or B) that this product carries a very reasonable risk of a fire starting through normal customer use.
Brian didn't really want to say "A" but he essentially did when he refused to acknowledge the possibility of a defective unit. He said the chances of a defect were "slim to zero," explaining to me about how the components are each inspected before assembly. When I raised the possibility that it had been improperly assembled or perhaps my unit was otherwise defective, he basically said no. When I noted that I noticed others on Amazon were also having this issue, he literally laughed and said every product on Amazon has negative reviews from a few people.
This was pretty insulting given the time that I had invested and my earnest belief that I had used this product right and it was a defective unit. But at that point I realized that any company that would rather insult a customer than acknowledge the possibility that they could make a manufacturing error was not worth a minute more of my time other than helping assure other people aren't in my exact situation.
I wish I had taken others' warnings seriously and not written them off as being posted by careless people who didn't bother taking care of the unit properly.
You need to know that this product has the potential to catch fire, even if you use it very responsibly and even if you are as careful as I was. I'm not some random Internet troll I'm a regular suburban father who wouldn't bother posting this review if the product just stopped working.
It's a dangerous product, and even more dangerous that Bradley isn't taking the recent swell of customer fire reports seriously.
Buy Bradley BTIS1 Original Fully Automatic 4-Rack Outdoor Food Smoker Now
I bought this for my husband for Christmas to replace an old (scary-looking) smoker. It was a real pain having to ask his folks to send mesquite wood from Texas to Massachusetts, then cut it up, soak it, etc.
We tried the Bradley smoker this weekend while we had the unusually warm weather. It comes with pellets of wood which get fed in automatically; much easier. The prime rib was done in no time at all; we finished it off in the oven for a crispier outside. We also smoked fresh kielbasa. Both were amazing. Can't wait to try the cold smoke feature!
Read Best Reviews of Bradley BTIS1 Original Fully Automatic 4-Rack Outdoor Food Smoker Here
First off, GREAT choice looking at the Bradley Smoker!
I have a barrel smoker I have used for a few years and I needed to get something to make my life a little easier so I could smoke over night and not have to get up every hour to add wood.
The Bradley Smoker 4 Rack is an awesome tool backed up by an awesome company. I have had mine for about a year now. I have smoked, ribs, brisket, pork butts, and cold smoked cheese. I have chicken wings, pork belly, and other meats lined up for the rest of this summer.
I do not suggest the digital smoker as it resets itself every 10 hours or so and requires you to unplug and restart. The Original Bradley Smoker has a sliding knob at the bottom that is used to control the heat. Normally you start out at max and leave it there for a while. After a time you will need to move it over an inch to set the temp.
Yes you do need to buy special briskets from Bradley but they are on sale here at Amazon and else where most of the time. I purchased one box of each flavor and have not needed to resupply in months and I do a lot of smoking.
Check out BradleySmoker.com and their forum and see for yourself. Great Product, Great Company! There is also a 6 rack/shelf unit out there and some come wrapped in stainless steel for a nice look!
The one and only downside to this smoker, it does not produce a smoke ring. There is NOTHING missing from the flavor but there is no smoke ring. My solution to that is starting meats in my barrel smoker for a couple hours then moving it to the Bradley Smoker for an overnight cooking!
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I had high hopes for this smoker, as my family loves smoked food, which we'd always done on a Weber grill in the past.
The Bradley Electric Smoker started out okay, but now has ultimately proven to be unreliable. We've had it for about 1 1/2 years, but have only used it perhaps 10 times.
The smoke generator stopped functionally correctly first: it is supposed to change the smoke chip every 20 minutes, but this became erratic, and it would leave a chip without changing it for an extended period creating acrid smoke. I called Bradley; they kindly sent me a new timer for the generator, which I installed, but it continues to malfunction and has to be watched like a hawk. The internal parts of the generator are clear and not clogged with grease or debris.
Second: it has never gotten as hot as I would have wanted; maximum temperature is 180 degrees for the first few hours even with pre-heating, and starting the desired meats in the oven before putting the ribs and chicken in the smoker.
And last, the base developed a crack in the plastic, in front where the temperature control is, with no history of damage to the unit.
Overall, I cannot recommend this appliance, and suggest you try other ways to get your smoked meats fix.
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I own many of these products and they are great. I was dissapointed, the first one had paint chips and I ordered a new one, then the second one did as well and I just decided to keep it. Other than that, this is an excellent product.
