I have an mes40 my wife got me for my bday a month ago. Like you, I have smoked with charcoal for many years and didn't even consider an electric. A guy I work with got an mes and brought in some meats he did and I was impressed at how it came out. My old charcoal cabinet smoker was on it's last leg so I convinced wifey to get me the mes40. I love it.
The main issue I had with it was keeping the smoke rolling. When the smoker got to temp and the element shut off the chips would stop smoking. There are some mods people were doing to help this, but I wasn't to keen on voiding the warranty on a brand new smoker. Alot of folks with a mes smoker raved about the
amnps. (Amazing pellet smoker). A tray you fill with smoking pellets and light, ghrow in the bottom of your mes, set temp, and come back to enjoy your meats. No filling chip trays every 1/2 hour, fiddling with flow, etc. Just set and forget. I bought one, and glad I did.
I see you have some wood cut. If you can chip it up it will work fine in your mes. Smoking pellets are hard to find in my area so when I first got my
amnps I tried it with chip and it worked fine, if you decided to get one, your chips would work in it as well. But I have to say, once I found some smoking pellets and tried them in the
amnps in my mes40, I won't be messing with chips any more. I found a place about 25 miles from me in a small town i used to live in keeps them on the shelf. 20 bucks for 20 lb bag, sounds like alot, but most smokes only tske a handful or two, so a bag should last me all summer, thats with smoking atleast once a week. With a full tray of pellets in the
amnps it will smoke for about 10 to 12 hours. When I used chips in the amnps I got about 6 hours. The chips have to be relatively small and packed in good, but either way I highly recomend getting sn amnps. Unless your happy with the smoke production of your factory set up and don't mind adding chips every half hour to 45 mins. Some people are fine with that, thats ok too, it all good if it makes good bbq.
Another thing about electric smokers, if you're used to charcoal, the smoke ring is almost non existent in the mes, but they still make some darn good bbq with litte fuss.
