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Let me start off by saying I bought this because it was cheap, so I did not have great expectations for it. It was more something to start off with until I get my big one. Having said that, it is good for what you pay. Since you are probably wondering what the biggest issues will be, let me explain the issues I have had with it:
1. The bowl that holds the charcoal is too shallow, and there is no grate provided to allow ashes to drop. That means when you want to smoke a brisket right (i.e. 10+ hours), the coals will suffocate in their own ashes and the temperature will drop too low. I have remedied this problem by installing my own makeshift grate which allows the ashes to sift to the bottom. But, since it is shallow, it limits the total cook time you have until the ashes pile up and suffocate the coals anyway.
2. The little door on the side that allows you access to the smoker without opening the lid is entirely too small for its intended purpose. This means when you need to add wood or charcoal, there is really no way to add it evenly or quickly. I have had to resort to using tongs, heat-resistant gloves, and throwing the charcoal in order to get it evenly dispersed. Further adding to the frustration is trying to add water to the water bowl. It sits well to the top of the door, so there is no effective way to pour water in. I have resulted to using a folded paper plate to funnel the water to the bowl.
3. Limited access to the meat. If you have a full smoker going, the top rack actually blocks access to the stuff you have underneath. That means if you have anything on the top rack, there is no real way to get to what is underneath if you want to turn it, baste it, or anything else. That also means that if you have any mopping sauce etc. to add to anything on the bottom, there isn't any way to do it evenly. Further, if you do want to baste anything using the water bowl mixture, you will have to open the side door and use a baster to suck up the liquid, then go through the open top to apply it.
So, like the title says, don't expect too much. This is a great little smoker for small jobs, especially for the price, but don't expect to get any serious smoking done with it.
P.S. cleaning this thing can be dangerous. The metal supports that hold up the bowls/racks are really sharp.
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Although, I have to use more charcoal than recommended amd some work is required to assemble, it still deserves 5 stars. It won't cook hot enough without a nearly full basin of charcoal, at the start. I do understand that smokers cook at lower temps, but it's just too slow without a good amount of charcoal. Cheapo charcoal doesn't work so well with this one, unless you are cooking burgers, steaks or hot dogs only. This is especially true if you are cooking a lot of meat and using both racks. I like having the nice size door because it's possible to turn over the meat you are slow smoking (with a very long tong) on the second rack, without having to remove the lid and the top cooking rack, but in doing so, you really need to be careful. If needed, you can use the door to add more charcoal/woodchips. The reason this grill is my all time favorite; the meat gets so tender, and there's no burn char. It browns and gets a delicious color, nice smokey flavor, but no burned areas. No charcoal residue gets on your meat. I don't use a water pan. This is a slow way to cook, but you don't have to constantly watch over your meat. I find when I get a good, even smoke going, only have to turn the meat once. Really, I can go cook my side dishes without running out to check on the meat every 10 minutes. Flare ups are rare. Healthy size slabs of ribs takes about 3 1/2 hours to cook. Best to cook burgers and hot dogs first, as soon as the charcoal is ready, without the lid on...after they are done, I put on the ribs and let them slow smoke.I don't know where they get that 50 lbs of meat from. Each rack holds approx., 1 large St Louis style ribs with tip attached or 2 baby back slabs or 2 chickens or 5 nice size steaks. It will smoke a 12 to 18 pound turkey and each rack will easily hold 3 lbs of hot dogs or sausage or 10 midsize burgers.
UPDATE: I can attest, this smoker cooks up tender, moist and....evenly cooked meats, without vents. Never a need to place your meat into a low temp oven to finish cooking and tender up. No. The meat is lip smacking good, evenly cooked, beautiful color, and tender moist, right off this smoker.
Yes, it has an open bottom area for the charcoal pan...makes for easier cleanups. The pan covers the bottom of the smoker. The smoke rises up through your meat and delivers smokey flavor. I use a, whiskey oak/hickory blend, of chips. That smoke flavor is in every delicious bite, okay. Once the charcoal is well ashed over and burned down some, you will not have flareups as long as the lid is properly fitted down into the barrel.
I add about 8 briquettes for every 1 1/2 hours of smoking, for the amount I cook. I start bone down and only, turn my meat once. You don't have to monitor temps. It's not necessary. Once you get a good smoke going, this smoker holds it's temp. With experience, you begin to know how many briquettes to add for the amount of meat you are smoking. Old fashioned, Kingsford's charcoal and water soaked wood chips, works best. Matchlight is convenient, but it burns too fast and you can't use it as "add to" charcoal because of the lighter fluid infused into it.
The only person I would not recommend this smoker for....someone that wants to cook up a lot of meat at one time. It doesn't handle a lot of meat, very well. I wish the cooking grate was 22", but it's closer to 18" It is not as durable as Weber's Smokey Mountain, but it's also about 1/5 the price.
I'm just replacing mine. It never developed any inside rust, just a little on the outside after 13 years and I was not nice to my smoker. With care, this Brinkmann's will last a good 15 years. It's constructed of a heavier gauge steel. Over time, the thermometer may fall out, unless you seal it. I never paid attention to the temp readings anyway ( I focus on how my charcoal is burning) and when mine fell out, I plugged the area with aluminum foil.
My father was real old school. His, was an open grill was on a tripod; no lid, no hood, no vents, or thermometer. All he had was a spray bottle for flare ups, a big basting brush and some heavy duty foil. He'd sit there and baby that meat for hours and clamp a foil tent over the entire, meat filled, grate. His, were some of the smoked best ribs you'd ever sink your teeth into.
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It won't get hot enough if you use the charcoal in the pan as directed. I drilled a bunch of holes all over the pan to get some airflow through the charcoal. Works great now.Honest reviews on Brinkmann 810-5301-6 Charcoal Grill and Smoker, Black
I have been reading these reviews and after seeing all the recommended modifications, I would have changed my mind and I would never buy this smoker thinking that it will never function properly. With that being said, I have actually had this smoker for over a year and cooked right out of the box (No Mods) with excellent results. On the last 4th of July, I had smoked 40 pounds of pork butt all at once for 13 hours. They melted in your mouth!So let's get real. This is an entry level smoker. I got mine at Home Depot for $. You definitely should use good charcoal and you have to keep the door open and the lid off until the charcoal ashes over. Once it's hot, put in your wood "chunks," then your water pan. Put in the racks and add the meat. Now put the lid on and you're off. If you put enough charcoal in, then you will probably need to add more every hour. Use tongs to push some of the old charcoal back and add more wood/charcoal. You will probably have to add water every 2 to 3 hours pouring carefully through the grating. Remember that you are not looking at a propane or electric smoker where you can set the heat and walk away. Charcoal needs a little finesse. This is what barbecuing is all about!! The thermometer reads warm/ideal/hot. I cook at ideal (duh) and have still had great results. Once the meat looks cooked, check the temp in the meat to see if it's done. If this had a real thermometer, I might get frustrated trying to keep the temp in the same place all day long, but again its charcoal. You won't have prolonged steady heat.
Considering this is an entry level smoker for $ I give it 5 stars. I have never regretted buying this smoker. This smoker will only better your smoking skills. Hope this helps!
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The original review posted followed a 2 year long odyssey in getting to an excellent working smoker for less than half the price of the smaller Weber Smokey Mountain, but included a number of things that didn't work out. I've condensed all that into this shorter review which only includes the things that worked.
The money saving design of this smoker has serious operational and safety issues. One of the problems is that when you place the initial load of charcoal in the charcoal pan, it immediately begins ashing over and smothering itself. This is exacerbated by lack of ventilation for the charcoal and quickly gets worse as ashes form. After a while, there are hot briquettes covered with ash producing very low and inefficient heat. So now you need to add more charcoal. Your choices are two: 1) Add it piece by piece through the miniscule door provided good luck getting an even spread, or 2) wearing stout leather gloves, remove the food and food grill, remove the second grill, remove the water pan, and then drop briquettes into the charcoal pan thereby creating clouds of charcoal ash which then proceeds to coat everything nearby including the interior of the smoker. This also tends to partially bury the newly added charcoal thereby hurrying the smothering process described earlier. Of course, one could reach down into the 200+degree smoker (wearing their stout leather gloves thereby burning only the upper arms and perhaps the face...) and lift out the charcoal pan. However, this requires tilting the pan to clear the upper brackets thereby dumping some ash and pieces of partially spent charcoal on the ground. This also happens when replacing the pan.
So, to get around all this, and solve some other issues, there are a number of things that can be done to turn this into a more user friendly smoker and one that really "smokes".
I mounted the legs on the OUTSIDE of the smoker, making sure the heads of the screws are inside the smoker and the square nuts are inside the channels of the legs on the outside of the smoker. This allows the entire smoker to be lifted off the charcoal pan If you need to add or adjust the charcoal, simply lift the complete smoker (lid in place) off the charcoal pan and its mesh fence, add or adjust the charcoal, add more "smoke wood" if desired, and lower the smoker back onto the charcoal pan/fence all without losing significant heat. This may sound cumbersome, but it's pretty simple, takes only seconds, and it works great. This is why the screw heads holding the legs are on the inside there's nothing protruding to catch on the lip of the charcoal pan when lifting the smoker off and/or putting it back on.
Then I went to Lowe's and bought:
* 8 one foot concrete square pavers ($.99 each)
* a sheet of Lath Diamond Mesh (27" x 96") for $6.98 Lowe's item number 11811
* 2 small grills to fit on top of the charcoal pan (Weber #7440 charcoal grates the description says 18.5" diameter, but they're actually 13.5" about $10.00 apiece)
* A 2 foot by 2 foot piece of galvanized steel (used for putting under water heaters) for a couple of bucks.
I fastened the charcoal grates to the top of the charcoal pan at right angles to each other such that the "holes" created are square (I originally started out with only one grate, but lost too much charcoal through the slots, so I added the second one later.) I drilled four 3/16" holes just outside the diameter of the 7440 grates and used 4 #8 T-nuts on top of the pan (prongs facing down) and 4 #8 screws coming up through the bottom of the lip of the charcoal pan and into the T-Nuts. The flanges of the T-Nuts grip the bottom grate and hold it to the charcoal pan. I fastened the second grate to the first using baling wire (I could probably have fastened the two together just using the T-nuts & bolts if I had done it all at the same time).
Next, I cut a 2 1/2" strip off the mesh lengthwise and formed it into a circle such that it is about 10-11 inches in diameter (and 2 ½ inch high). I fastened the ends of this together with wire and fastened it directly to the charcoal grates with wire, which in turn are fastened to the charcoal pan as described earlier. There are 2 reasons the fence is smaller in diameter than the top of the charcoal pan: 1) to allow air to be sucked down into the charcoal pan around the periphery of the fence and then up through the charcoal promoting even burning. (Some people suggest drilling large holes in the charcoal pan, but then you're dealing with charcoal ash spilling out of the vent holes, etc.), and 2) to direct the heat from the charcoal to the bottom of the water pan and reduce the amount of heat going directly up along the walls of the smoker .
This resolves a couple of issues. 1) The charcoal now has circulation around it and burns more evenly and completely. 2) The ash that forms now falls through the grate into the charcoal pan instead of smothering the charcoal.
The ECB has no adjustable vents like the Weber Smokey Mountain, and has a BIG open bottom. I had to sit in front of the thing the whole time monitoring a digital thermometer probe at grill level and add/remove briquettes one at a time every 15-30 minutes in order to maintain a temperature near 225 degrees (but in fact the temperature varied from 205 to 240). So, I decided to fix this.
I went back to Lowe's and bought a roll of aluminum "flashing" 6" wide by 25 feet long (Lowe's #12535 $14.36). From this I made a "skirt" to fit around the bottom of the smoker body between it and the ground essentially extending the smoker body to the ground. The ends of the skirt are fastened together with "Pop" rivets. The smoker body sits about 5" off the ground on its legs, so the 6" high skirt fits between the legs and the body. I punched twelve 3/4 inch holes in the skirt, 4 between each leg on 2 inch centers. Then I made three sliding doors (from the flashing) with matching holes to shut off the air flow to each set of four holes. Now I had adjustable bottom vents.
The ECB lid fits very loosely. That coupled with no top vent makes precise control like that described by Weber Smokey Mountain users not possible.
So I decided to complete the fix of the Brinkmann ECB by addressing these two areas. I cut a round piece of the aluminum flashing 4 ½" in diameter and left two 1" by 1" "ears" sticking out of each side which I bent up to look like the Weber round vents. I drilled 4 1" holes in the top of the ECB behind the handle (opposite the side of the thermometer). I drilled 4 matching holes in the round aluminum vent with a fifth small hole in the middle to fasten it to the ECB lid so it could be rotated to allow full vent or complete closure. The round aluminum piece is flat and the top of the smoker is domed, so it won't seal adequately as it is. To remedy this, after mounting it, I "crimped" it in the four places on the edge at each of the four holes by inserting a 1/8" pin under it and pressing down with a pair of pliers on either side of the pin this has the effect of shrinking the periphery and pulling it down to the domed lid surface. You can see this detail in the video.
I also added a small flap made from the same flashing to fit over a ¾" hole to allow for a "feed through" for an electronic temperature probe.
Next step was to seal the lid. After trying fiberglass "rope" as someone suggested (didn't work well and fell off after a few uses), I got some Saint Gobain 100S Strip-N-Stick Silicone Gasket Tape, 3/16" Thick x 1/2" Wide x 15 Feet Long with High Temperature Pressure-Sensitive-Adhesive Backing for around $20 from Amazon. I applied the tape so it was partially on the round "outdent" that runs around near the bottom of the lid and partially on the narrower part of the lid just below this "outdent". The effect is that the gasket tape forms a taper fit narrower at the bottom and wider at the top because of the "outdent". When placing the lid on the ECB, a little care needs to be used to make sure the gasket seats properly.
Now for the final assembly. I laid out and leveled the 8 pavers in a 2' x 4' rectangle. I put the 2' x 2' piece of galvanized steel on top of the 4 pavers on the left and the charcoal pan on top of that. (The galvanized sheet provides a better seal around the bottom of the skirt and the four pavers on the right provide an even surface to set the smoker when you lift it off to adjust charcoal, etc.) Then I lower the smoker body over the charcoal pan.
EPILOGUE
The mods described cost about $75, so depending on where you buy the Brinkmann, the total cost of it plus mods will be between $105 and $140 still a far cry from $275 for the smaller Weber Smokey Mountain grill. And I had fun doing it!
I can now start a pile of charcoal in a Weber starter chimney, put a ring of unlit charcoal inside the periphery of the little mesh fence that sits atop the charcoal grid, and after 20 minutes or so, dump the lit charcoal in the middle. While the charcoal is lighting itself in the chimney, I fill the water pan, place the meat on the grills, and place the thermometers in the meat and on the grill and lower the "loaded" ECB over the hot charcoal and I'm good to go.
I originally thought that I'd buy the Weber if we really liked smoked food, but I wouldn't trade this one for a Weber on a bet! And speaking of bets, I'd bet this one works better than the Weber...if for no other reason than I can lift the body off and easily get to the charcoal. I've been using this for over a year with outstanding results and in fact have made some of the best pastrami I've ever tasted including pastrami from a famous New York Deli!
SOME NOTES ON TEMPERATURE GUAGES
The gauge that comes with the Brinkmann shows Warm, Ideal & Hot. This is not bad in and of itself. I.e.; if you know the "I" in IDEAL is 220 degrees, you could just set it there. The problem is the reaction time of the gauge is way too long. During one smoke session, a wind gust came along and the internal temperature at the grid level (according to my Fluke digital thermal probe) went from 230 to 195 degrees within about 30 seconds. The built in gauge didn't move. The problem is that there is no probe on the built in gauge and the temperature gauge body is mounted to the lid. Therefore, the gauge measures the temperature of the actual lid itself. This is a big "heat sink" and is very slow to react making the gauge reading essentially worthless. I replaced it with a Taylor Weekend Warrior Grill /Smoker Thermometer $12.56 at Amazon. While this does have a probe extending out from the body and does respond a bit faster than the ECB stock gauge, it too is a bit slow to react to temperature changes. So I got a Maverick Wireless BBQ Thermometer Set Maverick ET732 approx. $60 from Amazon. The Maverick has two probes one for the grill temperature and one for the food. It also has a remote. So now I can get everything set up and take my remote into the house, watch TV, read a book and, only glance at the remote infrequently to check the temps (it also has alarms that can be set in case the temperatures get too high or too low...). I didn't count the cost of the Maverick since I'd use it no matter what smoker I was using, and didn't count the cost of the Taylor since I wouldn't have done that.
SOME NOTES ON TEMPERATURE CONTROL
There are two ways to control the temperature of a charcoal "fire": regulate the amount of charcoal (as the original factory Brinkmann design intended) or regulate the amount of airflow to the charcoal. Of course you could try to do both, but regulating the amount of charcoal is tricky and has a long response time. Regulating the airflow is far and away the best method and this is what this design allows. I can now open one of the sliding doors and open the top vent about ¾ of the way and walk away keeping the Maverick remote handy since I'm paranoid. The grill temp will rise to around 225 and stay there for hours. To raise it, open some of the vents; to lower it, close some of the vents. Wind has only a little effect on temperature. There is still some time lag between adjusting the vents and seeing a temperature change between 5 15 minutes, but that would be the same with any smoker using air vents.
Hope all this helps...
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