Bradley Digital 4- Rack Smoker

by Editor
List includes: Bradley Smoker, Smokers

Product Description

The Bradley 4-rack Digital Smoker includes all the features of the Original Bradley Smoker, along with the benefits of digital technology. Temperature, time, and smoke are now completely controllable so you can decide how much smoke you want, how long your food is going to be smoked for, and at what temperature. Perfect for entertaining, creating gourmet foods in your own home, or just enjoying the flavor that smoking brings, the new Bradley Digital Smokers offer an easier and better way to automatically roast, smoke and barbecue in the outdoors. The exterior is Powder Epoxy Steel and the interior is Polished Stainless Steel Internal Cooking Vol : 2288 cu in Internal Heater: 500 watt cooking element / 125 watt smoking element Power: - 110 V 50 - 60 Hz , - 5.5 Amps (240 Volt Model coming mid 2006) ETL & CE Listed Max Temperature: Controllable up to 320F. Min Temp: subject to ambient Digital Controls : Temperature, Time, Smoke

Product Details

Full Digital Control
4 Cooking Racks
8 hours of controlled cool smoke
Cooks meat, chicken, pork and fish
9 different flavors of hardwoods

Video Reviews

No video reviews found for this product.

Customer Reviews

the best smoker for home use

Review Date: June 11, 2010

Reviewer: Carryit, iowa

i have used the same smoker for 3 years, its wonderful and ive never had a problem... it sits outside summer and winter.... i use it summer and winter although i move it closer to the back door for winter use. i have used other smokers with wood chips and the pucks are far superior. the pucks create a better purer thicker smoke and they are fed in automatically so choose how many you want to smoke with and walk away... i use a wireless meat thermometer which transmits to me when smoking is complete... some meats i put in the grill next to the smoker for browning.... go bradley... you'll thank me later :o)

Great product.......one problem

Review Date: June 1, 2010

Reviewer: T. Rutledge,

My smoker wss broken right out of the box. The puck feeder would constantly dump pucks no matter what ajustments I made. A quick phone call to the manufacturer and they shipped a replacement feeder to my house in 3 days. Very good customer service.

The smoker does a great job and is truly a set it and forget it cooker. I have tried it with beef, pork, veal and fish and everything turned out great. Make sure you have a good meat thermometer to make sure you cook to perfection.

Very Disappinted Customer

Review Date: May 18, 2010

Reviewer: F. G. Orr, Vancouver, Canada

Note, comments relate to the 6-rack digital but I believe are largely applicable to all the Bradley Smokers

I was really excited to get this product and spent over a year trying to get it to work. After a year and a bunch of research I came to the conclusion that the product is crap. You are welcome to do your own research but I think what you will find is that this product is very easy to use. However, the ease of use comes at the cost of a smoker that does an unsatisfactory job of actually smoking. As you know the key to good smoking is maintaing conistant heat and the Bradley is simply not designed to do this.

My list of issues are as follows:

1) The six rack smoker has the same heating element as the four rack smoker. So while it is significanlty larger it has no more power than the smaller model. I believe its heating element is only like 500 watts and I believe my wifes hair dryer has more power than that.

2) The heating element in the smoker is way underpowered for the six rack unit (and I suspect the four rack one as well). It takes over an hour to heat up to 200 degrees and then drops way down when you open it up to put the food in and takes well in excess of another hour to get back up to tempeture. It was so under powered that I would just leave the unit set at its highest setting, like 300 degrees, and I do not think I ever got the unit up past 250 degrees. Since it was so underpowered it took very long cook so that towards the end of my use with it, after the smoke had set, I would take the food out and put it on the gas barbque at 250 degrees to finish off.

3) Owing to the design every time you have to open the unit to check on the food you loss all of the heat (i.e. there is no effective heat sink) which then takes for ever heat up. Think about it, to service the unit you have to open the door competely allows all the heat to escape.

4) the design of the heating element creates hot spots along the back of unit and it is significanly hotter at the bottom than it is at the top. Bradley themselves recommend rotating the racks front to back and top to bottom to get an even cooking. This means you need to open the door which allows all the heat to escape.

5) the digital thermostat is located just above the heating element so it reads high. The spread between the tempeture reading on the digital unit and one taken manually from the top of the unit is like 30 degrees.

6) the digital thermostat has like a 20 degree varience between starting and stoping when it is at tempature. Do research, I read that people recommend buying the orginal and an after market digital thermostat which is far superiour and overall cheaper than buying the digital Bradley.

7) An electric smoker will not give you a smoke ring. The smoke ring comes from a chemical reaction related to the carbon burning off from charcol or wood. The smoke ring is a sign of good smoked food.

My reasoning for giving it 2 stars is because the smoke generator works wonderfully well.

The cons in my humble opinion so far out weight the pro's that a cheap guy like me gave the Bradley away. Spending almost $500 on a smoker to dump it becasue it does not do a good job hurts, expecially when all of the issues that I listed above are well documented on the net and I failed to do the detailed research before hand.

Rather than trying to modify the Bradley to try to get it to work I decided to buy a Weber Smokey Mountain. While WSM is lacking the electronics it is wonderful to use. It maintins the heat like an oven, I actually cannot believe how fast it heats up and how long it will maintain a constant tempeture without any adjustment. There is lots of support for the WSM on the internet and I really do not see it being any harder to use. Personally, I also like the idea of cooking with charcoal, it just adds to the mistique of smoking food and impresses the neighbors.

This product in my mind is just a gimmick which produces an unsatisfactory product. Please, do yourselves a favour and read the Bradley sites on the net and you will see all of the issue I mention above are documented and the modifications people are doing to deal with heat and tempeture issues. Knowledge is power.

Amazon.com Price: $426.71 (as of 2010-09-06 07:08:53 GMT) Product prices and availability are accurate as of the date/time indicated and are subject to change. Any price and availability information displayed on Amazon.com at the time of purchase will apply to the purchase of this product.

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Tags: bradley, digital, rack, smoker