First Bubblejunkie, WELCOME to SMF and you are now a member of the MES owners club!
M E S (
Making it
Easier to
Smoke amazing Q!)
Since you have owned several MES units you are familiar with the ins & out of what the MES is capable of, thus you are way ahead of most SMF newbies.
That is a surprising statement since you have owned 3 MES smokers. There are a lot of great features built into the MES, one of them is the external chip loading feature without having to open the door. The simplicity of the assembly and in the early days that was one of the keys to the MES success. You need the retrofit kit! That extra piece of metal between the heat elements and the chip tray inhibits good combustion of the chips. The retro kit is a larger area for the chips and the only metal between the bottom of the chip tray and the heat element is the tray bottom itself.
Masterbuilt made a mistake in the chip tray design when they upgraded the wattage of the elements from 800 to 1200 on the 40" and same increased wattage on the 30". I have some thoughts about why, but bottom line most new MES owners complain about proper chip burn/smoke so the current design isn't effective.
This is
one DIY solution, however I disagree with drilling holes, here is a mod to r
emove the plate in the tube. I have the older 40" with 800 watts and larger tray I have NEVER had a problem with proper chip burn and neither did any other MES 40 800w owner, that says the design and air flow is correct. The only thing broken then is that extra piece of metal and maybe the size of the chips tray. Again
get the retrofit kit. Bubble you have to understand that having a larger tray does NOT mean you can put more chips in, if you do you will get black smoke which will give your Q a creosote taste, AWFUL! After you complete the retrofit your chip tray after a smoke will have nothing but ash, not pieces of burnt wood just ash, meaning combustion proper and complete.
I have been a member of this forum and a MES owner for 5 years, no one has ever taken that drastic step to attempt to improve the smoke duration to burn chips. Most have worked on contraptions that are external and go through the chip tube hole, there are several on the market. The AMNS and the
AMNPS work inside the MES and are selling like hot cakes because they work better than anything else right now. Having said all the above, it doesn't hurt to experiment, so go ahead, let us know how it works, take lots of pics.
I like chips too, however using the MES wood chip tray will at best get you 30-45 minutes of smoke. You might want to read the chip strategy that works for me
here. I also use chunks about 1"x1", however chunks don't go in until about 45 minutes, they need a hot bed of ash to burn properly. Personally I don't dump chunks in with the tube, to put them in, I remove the tube and put chunks in with tongs, then re-insert the tube. The reason is an odd sized chunk can cause the tube to hang up and you might not be able to open the tube or close it due to hanging on a chunk. Like many MES owners on SMF I use chips for short smokes, and for longer smokes I use the AMNS, getting 4+ hours of smoke.
I really don't think it is that difficult to come up with your own effective method to burn chips for a longer duration, I haven't bothered with it, but now that I'm not working I intend to do some experimenting. Check out
some of the ideas here, they might inspire you.