Cedar Rapids Brewing Society

Soon, I will be looking to acquire a smoker. I'd like to be able to do cold smoke as well...but that may be a bit much to expect to do that with an economical unit.

But there are other things to consider....electric or propane; wood chips or chunks or pellets or disks; reliability of the unit (cheap is not economical in my book); and size of the unit.

I am a beginner, I am thinking a digital unit might be best....but if I can't do cold smoke, then an analog unit would be fine.

I would like to use it year round.

What do you use? And, what would you recommend?

I have an electric I pretty much stopped using, works really good for being able to set an exact temp. The problem I had with trying to cold smoke cheese was that the smoker wouldn't get hot enough to get chips or pellets smoking.

For that I found an A-Maze-N tube to be a great tool. Just fill the tube with pellets, light and let it burn a bit then blow out the flame and it'll keep smoldering.


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My electric is a masterbuilt, digital display for temp and timer setting. Think it was around 200, I invested in a good meat thermometer with an additional probe that hangs in the smoker to monitor that temp as well.


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A standard costco/sams electric smoker, plus a good external electric thermometer to monitor it, is what I've been using with my FIL for a decade. Don't think it will cold smoke, but for just stocking up on 50 lbs of pork butts on a weekend, it's pretty simple.

Go check out the smokers at the Grill Works in Marion.

I love my Kamado, which can do it all, but it's probably out of your price range.