You can expect to add chips to your
Masterbuilt about every 30 to 45 minutes depending on the temp you are running. The higher the temp the more often the chips will need replenished.
Since it is electric, it only heats the chips to smouldering temp while the heating element is on unlike your SFB that had a bed of coals constantly producing heat and therefore constant smoke.
Not sure what you consider "good smoke" but around here good smoke is THIN BLUE SMOKE or TBS. If you can smell it, even if you cannot see it, the smoke is doing its job.
MY MES barely makes smoke at 180 degrees but at 225 it will make consistent smoke and I add chips about every 30 minutes. Well I used to do it that way.......
I have an
AMNPS as mentioned earlier and it makes your MES nearly set it and forget it!
Hours of TBS with zero hassle. It is a wise investment! Get one.......
I will agree that MY MES does produce wonderful smokey food but it is slightly less "intense" in the level of smoke flavor than my old stick burner.
BUT
I never suffer from temp spikes or flare ups or billows of white smoke from every chunk of wood spontaneously igniting at once in my MES, which did happen on occasion in my stick burner. So I see the ever so slight trade off as a good thing considering that I do not have to babysit my smoker nonstop throughout the entire smoke.
Actually to increase the smokeyness in my MES I have been adding a little of stronger flavored pellets like hickory or mesquite mixed into whatever other pellets I am using at the moment.
On my old stick burner I considered those woods to be too strong for my tastes.
Only mod to my MES is that I added a chimney to improve the draft which helped with the smoke generation with normal chips in the tray as designed and after the addition of my
AMNPS.