I have owned the Brinkman "Smoke n Grill" and the honest truth, was that it was a great intro into smoking, but is a regret spend. They are more commonly known as the ECB's - El cheapo Brinkmans, because, they will not actually work well out of the box, you need to be prepared to do a little DIY to make them sing. See links below, but for reference, I had to:chokethechicken wrote:Thanks for all of the advice - or should that be thanks for making me spend a lot more than I was expecting!
I shall be sure to get a photo story together for the first time that I use my WSM.
Now, I need to find stockists of the Heatbeads and chunks of smoking wood.
1.) Modify the fire tray, so that it had holes in it, otherwise it just ashes up and the fire goes out.
2.) I also added a grate to give about 5cm gap between charcoal and fire tray.
3.) Extended the legs so I could rest the charcoal pit on bricks
4.) Added a weber style airflow control at the top of the unit from a cheap £8 tesco kettle bbq lid
All in all, a great experience but out of the season I owned it for, I got about 4 decent smokes out of 15-20 attempts. It then rusted to peices over winter, even though it was covered and out of the rain. I ended up buying the ProQ, which was amazing in comparisson. Toby has some good prices, and you are way better off getting this for the sake of £70-£80 more. The WSM is another £120 on top of this, so bang for buck the ProQ is definately where I would spend my money. To be clear, I eventually bought the WSM, only because I was looking for consistency in my cooks especially for comp's. However, I still miss the extra capacity my ProQ had when we were having many guests around.
http://www.thesmokering.com/forum/viewt ... ifications
http://www.randyq.addr.com/ecb/ecbmods.html
My review of the ProQ
http://www.bbqfanatics.co.uk/2010/03/pr ... ulder.html
..and to think that I was going to buy an iPad 2 instead for my birthday - I hang my head in shame.