The Bradley Smoker Product Range  ® 

Before designing their smoker the Bradley Family faced two principal challenges when attempting to smoke salmon with a traditional 'burn-box' type smoker. Firstly, the importance of not allowing the wood chippings to ignite, or to burn completely to an ash soon became apparent. When this happens residues and unpleasant after-tastes are readily absorbed by the salmon. But to prevent this required almost constant tending of the wood chippings.  The second challenge was that of consistency and repeatability. The timing and the quality of the finished product would be affected by variations in temperature, and in the type, the quality and the moisture content of the wood chippings. 

In the design for the Original Bradley Smoker, Bradley set about eliminating both of these inherent difficulties, while at the same time designing a machine which would both cold smoke (smoke without heat) and hot smoke (simultaneous smoking and cooking). The result is the modern day Bradley Smoker, which is now available in three models - the Original (pictured right), the Bradley Smoker in Stainless Steel, and the standalone Smoke Generator.

The principle of operation is that the wood chippings are formed into so called bisquettes by being compressed under controlled conditions. The consumable so produced, smoulders in a predictable and repeatable way on top of the electrically heated element, and after a fixed time interval of approximately 20 minutes, the next bisquette is automatically pushed forward displacing the spent bisquette off of the heated element to be extinguished in the bowl of water below.  There is a second heated element within the cabinet for the purpose of heating the cabinet when hot smoking. This infra red element allows the cabinet to be heated up to 160 deg C. Hot enough to use the insulated cabinet as a conventional oven, with the internal temperature being read from the thermometer on the front.

Not obvious from the diagram, is the adjustable vent in the top of the cabinet, from which the smoke escapes. In this respect, the Bradley is a natural draught smoker.  The unit stands about the size of a small fridge (see specifications), and is supplied with four horizontal wire racks. 

The stainless steel model is, with the exception of the steel, identical in its operation and performance. Also in stainless steel is the third product, the Smoke Generator sold without the cabinet but supplied instead with an adaptor. The adaptor allows the smoke generator to be easily fitted onto a structure of your own design.

The very latest addition to the Bradley Smoker is the new 4 rack digital smoker. The smoking cabinet is broadly similar in its design, although with different styling on the door but the temperature control is now transferred to the smoke generator and is set using a digital control. The improvement on the Original model goes further in that the actual temperature cabinet is fed back to the digital control providing true thermostatic control rather than the simple variable resistor (rheostat) control on the earlier models. The digital controls allows both oven time and temperature to be set . A separate digital control allows the amount of time that the smoke should operate for to be set, to the nearest 20 minutes, that being the cycle time of a single Flavour Bisquette.  We have tried it , we love it , and if you like digitally controlled cooking equipment you will love it too.

Full Product Specifications

Our Experience with the Bradley Smoker

We have several Bradley Smokers which we use for hot and cold smoking, at demonstrations and for personal use. The oldest of these has been in regular use for three years. At about 18kgs the units are light enough to pick up and carry.  For general operation, positioning them under a lean to, or within say a garage with the doors open would be ideal. Although not designed for indoor use, if you chose to position a Bradley Smoker permanently indoors then a smoke extractor hood, above the unit would be sufficient to clear the smoke generated.

The heated element takes about ten to fifteen minutes to come up to the temperature required to smoulder the bisquettes. After loading the feeder, use the Bisquette Advance button to test the mechanism and position the first bisquette on the heated element. Thereafter, the bisquettes will feed automatically, one every 20 minutes. However it is not unknown for the occasional bisquette to drop at an odd angle especially when loaded with just a few remaining bisquettes . Good advice is not to allow the feed to run too low on bisquettes. Alternatively you could add to the weight of the column with an appropriate object - a good sized screwdriver, handle end down, is ideal.  It is true that, starting from full,  the unit would smoke unattended for eight hours, but there is merit in casting an eye over the operation when you can. Unless of course you set the machine to smoke last thing at night. 

Bisquettes
The bisquettes fulfil there purpose admirably well, as is obvious as soon as you smell the smoke coming from the smoker. Although somewhat less than a bonfire, an impressive amount of smoke is produced from a single bisquette, and this high smoke density does obviously effect smoking times within the cabinet.  For example, it is unlikely that you would want to smoke salmon in the Bradley Smoker for more than say 6 hours, whereas in a traditional smokehouse with often quite low smoke density, the process may take a week! This is also good news from the point of view of bisquette consumption. At current prices smoking with the Bradley Flavour Bisquettes costs less than 1 UK pound per hour.  Bisquettes come in nine different flavour varieties and generally in two different box sizes. Full details are available in the shop.

The practise of smoke-roasting or smoke barbecuing, with its great variety of tastes and techniques,  is vastly popular in N America, and while its popularity is growing in the UK and in Europe, for us, the Bradley Smoker has had to prove its worth on more traditionally recognised smoking projects.  Smoked chicken, duck, guinea fowl, mackerel, loin of pork - all hot smoking projects - proved straightforward and immensely rewarding. Of course, much of the success is down to the preparation of the food before it is smoked, but there is a warm feeling in knowing that, with the preparation complete, the smoker can be relied upon.

Cold Smoking

For cold smoking, we were particularly keen to achieve results with salmon, (and for salmon one can also read trout) with cheese, and with bacon.  For all these projects we really need temperatures below say 30 deg C, and it is worth noting from the outset, that regardless of the smoking equipment in use, if it is a warm day with a warm air temperature then it is going to be impossible to reach temperatures low enough for cold smoking. If you want to cold smoke in the height of summer consider doing so very early in the morning, or even at night. For cold smoking with the Bradley Smokers (Original and Stainless Steel models) the cabinet heater should be firmly to the off position. To avoid any possibility that the heater is accidentally activated during cold smoking, it is a good idea to disconnect the auxiliary power lead that runs from the generator to the cabinet.  However, there are two further factors with which to contend. Firstly, the Bradley Smoker cabinets are insulated, which is great when hot smoking and roasting, essential even, but not at all helpful when we are trying to keep the temperature as low as possible. Secondly, the element that heats the bisquettes, which is always on during smoke creation, produces about 80 Watts of heat. Whilst this is about the same as a light bulb it can, under some circumstances, have quite a dramatic effect on the temperature inside the cabinet. While there has been much discussion, in forums and newsgroups, about how to optimise the cold smoking performance of the Bradley Smoker we are content to stick with our tried and tested technique for adapting the Bradley Smoker for use as a cold smoker, because, frankly, we could not be happier with the results. The technique relies upon the fact that the smoke generator can be easily detached from the cabinet, thus allowing the smoke to be generated in a second chamber (a cardboard box) and then piped into the cabinet (via a tumble dryer hose) . Whilst the method is somewhat Heath Robinson, (and its understandable why it doesn't appear in the Bradley Smoker documentation) the end result is a supply of continuous smoke to the cabinet at a temperature not noticeably above the ambient air temperature. Here is a full description of the technique for Adapting The Original and Stainless Steel Bradley Smokers for Cold Smoking.

Smoke Generator and Adaptor

In the setting of a farm shop, butchers shop or commercial smallholding, rather than adapting the cabinet models, you are more likely to see the Bradley Smoke Generator attached to a self built smokehouse, by means of the Adaptor.  Self built smokehouses are likely to be somewhat larger in volume than the Bradley cabinets, and are unlikely to be insulated. Therefore there will be no significant temperature rise and these structures are therefore ideal for cold smoking. Of course, you may wish to introduce a heat source for hot smoking as well; the choice is yours.  

We are often asked what size of smokehouse can be sustained in smoke by a single smoke generator. The blueprint supplied with the machine presents a smokehouse of about 6ft x 6ft x 8 ft, and you are unlikely to want to build one much larger.  However the characteristic of a smokehouse is really defined by smoke in, and smoke out, so even a very much larger volume would quite quickly fill with smoke.  The important part of the design is that the structure works as a natural draft smoker with smoke passing through the house, and no significant smoke passing back through the generator. If this does occur, the mechanism is likely to become clogged up with smoke residue. 

The most popular use of the smoke generator in the UK is undoubtedly for the smoking of sides of dry cured bacon, and of hams. However we have also known of them being used for the smoking of beef, and of venison. The range of flavours offered by the use of the Bradley Flavour Bisquettes opens some interesting possibilities for small scale commercial production of smoked meats.

Accessories

Warranties, Service and Support

The Bradley Smokers come with a 12 month warranty, managed in the UK, by the UK distributor. At Arden Smoker Supplies we can offer tips and advice on Bradley Smokers based on five years of our own experience with the machines in the UK.  We always carry the full range of bisquettes, and consumables, as well as a range of spare parts.   Bradley Smokers and Bisquettes are available in the shop.

In Store Take Back

Our In Store Take Back Scheme operates for 'like for like' purchases of Bradley Smokers .