ottawa foodies

Well I f**king hate the thing already!

I warmed it up and all was great, then turned on the smoke generator and it just keeps advancing the pucks one after the other.

The "biscuit advance" button is stuck in so I guess that is why.

HTH do I get it back out again so I can l load up all the pucks? Right now I just put one on there manually like I had been doing last time with the wood chunks. Sort of defeats the purpose ...

Check your puck advance button make sure it has not stuck.

Gah, problem solved - gave the button a little pry with my jackknife and all is well at this point.

Mine does that as well the pocket knife works well.

Just a bit of advice do not leave pucks in the unit. From experience they can get damp and get stuck.

So from what I've read on here in the past, it seems the pucks will advance before being completely burned so there will be wastage, is that right?

If so, is there any way to disable the automatic advance and do it only manually?

I guess I should just wait and see - but I'm not much of a wait-and-see sort of guy - so impatient :-)

Yes today I smoked some cheese so I only put three pucks in and advanced them at half hour intervals myself with a knife. Since cheese is a cold smoke temps need to be low so no problem. Takes a while for temp recovery so if you are doing something hot open as little as possible. I think they are set at 20 min advances. You would have to open it up and check to see if there is a timer or get a peek at the schematic. Remember do not close the damper on top it will result in the bradly not heating up as hot as it can get something about too much moisture.

Just checked and wow there is a lot of unburnt to those pucks ... but I think I see a decent way to do it manually without opening. Just need a bent coat hanger and only feed pucks into the stacking chamber as required. Actually, don't even need the coat hanger - just feed them manually and hit the advance button as required, no? You'll always have an extra puck on the chute inside but that should not matter.

OK just checked again and it is not that bad at all - the semi-burnt pucks that fall into the catch-tray continue to burn and smoke, so it seems you still get good utilization out of them.

You should put some water in the bowl that catches the pucks it keeps meats moist when cooking at higher temps. The water evaporates fairly quickly so check eveyr couple of hours you do not want ash accumulating. When the puck drops in the water a bit of steam comes off always a good thing when you low and slow.

I'm only around 150F or even a bit less so I'm not too worried about that. When I'm done smoking I'll crank up the temp a bit to finish my bacon - at that point I will probably add water