Bradley Technologies of British Columbia perfected their design for the Original Bradley Smoker in the 1980's.  It was designed specifically for cold smoking salmon, of which there is obviously a bountiful supply on the western pacific coast of Canada.  Fitted with an internal heat element the machine is equally capable as a hot smoker, barbeque or slow roasting oven. 

Before designing their smoker, when attempting to smoke salmon with a traditional 'burn-box' type smoker, the Bradley Family faced two principal challenges.  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. 

The Bradley Smoker 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.  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 Celcius. 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 below), and is supplied with four horizontal wire racks. 

Bradley also produce digitally programmable smokers available with either 4 or 6 racks.  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 allow 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 Bradley Flavour Bisquette.  We have tried it, we love it, and if you like digitally controlled cooking equipment you will love it too.

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 six or so years.  At about 18 kgs 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. 

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.

If we were impressed with the Bradley's performance when hot smoking, wait until you read our words on Cold Smoking with the Bradley Smoker.  We were frankly taken aback with this smoker's capability.