Big howdy from the Texas Hill Country

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grillathrilla

Newbie
Original poster
Sep 19, 2011
21
10
Texas Hill Country
For those not familiar with Texas (there must be two or three of you out there), the Texas Hill country begins roughly immediately west of Austin and extends west about 150 miles.  We're about 80 miles NW of San Antonio at 2200 feet elevation near Kerrville and have a small ranch where we raise exotic animals (blackbuck antelope) to sell to other ranches.

I have always enjoyed grilling (we have a little Weber Q grill that we use at the house and in the motorhome) and have wanted to build a grill/smoker for years, but that never bubbled up to the top of the priority list.  Last Thursday we made our monthly supply run to Costco in San Antonio and I noticed a Masterbuilt 40" smoker.  Uh-oh..

Thanks to my ever present iPhone, I checked the Costco price to make certain the smoker was competitively priced (it was at about $349 as I recall), and I read a bunch of reviews on Amazon.  Check and Check.  Next task was to convince the family CFO we needed the smoker.  Last trip to Costco I bought an Acer Tablet PC, so I was really pushing the envelope with the prospective smoker purchase (she might not let me go with her again.)

After a couple of minutes of whining/rationalizing, dear wife realized the easiest thing to do was to let me buy the Masterbuilt
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Broke in the MES today (after seasoning it per instructions) and cooked a brisket - it turned out pretty good, not great, but pretty good.  I'll expand on this more in the Electric board

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John

Weber Q, MES 40
 
Welcome aboard!

Lots of MES users here to guide you if you need it.

Thanks to all of you Texans down there who were so good to service men many years back!  And I include the cops who would arrest you for driving with a beer in hand unless it was Lone Star or Pearl!

Good luck and good smoking.
 
Thanks guys!!

I've wanted to buy or build a smoker for a long time, so I'm delighted this deal worked out.  Dear wife liked the inaugural brisket I did, so that helped her get over the initial investment 'issues' she had.

We still have a bunch of venison in the freezer, so I'm anxious to try smoking that.  After looking over what a Fattie consists of, I'm really ready to try the 'fat bomb' as well.

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John

Weber Q, MES 40, other stuff
 
Welcome to SMF. Do yourself a favor and send away for an AMAZE N SMOKER. The link is in the upper right corner of the pages. It will make using your MES so much easier. Lots of us here use them in watt burners like you have and it really improves your smoking
 
Welcome to SMF,, another MES user.  There is a lot of info under electric smokers for you if you ever have any questions.  I am one of those that are clueless about Texas,, do have a brother in San Antonio though.  He loves it there.  :)  Happy Smoking,, hope the MES 40 works out for ya.
 
Thanks for the warm welcome fellows, seems to be a friendly bunch on SMF!

I've read about five pages in on the Electric board and learned quite a bit and also trolled the Internet for smoking tips and rub recipes.

Read about the Amazing Smokey thingy and I might get one in the future if I decide to smoke overnight.  I had zero problems generating good smoke with the MES out of the box - I got a very adequate but not overwhelming smokey taste with just four tray loads of mesquite chips, so I'm very pleased so far with the smoke aspect of the MES.

I'm glad I have an electric smoker since the county just banned any open fires - this includes any kind of BBQ wood-fired grill and maybe even a charcoal grill; that didn't impact me so I didn't pay attention.  The drought here is historic and it is so bad we have large oak trees apparently dying (they dropped all of their leaves - we're praying they just went dormant but probably not.)  Our antelope herd (only 36 of them) is going through about a ton of feed a month.

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John

Weber Q, MES 40, other stuff
 
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