Reddit reviews Peace, Love & Barbecue: Recipes, Secrets, Tall Tales, and Outright Lies from the Legends of Barbecue: A Cookbook

I read both /r/smoking and r/bbq, and /r/bbq in general has better traffic and is more suited to "can someone tell me about this model smoker"?

Anyhoo, it's a little hard to tell the quality from the picture. Brinkmann is a good name. I liken them to Toyota. Not the best on the market, also not the worst. I have a Brinkmann SnP and while it has drawbacks, it's not something that I'm unhappy with. It's a good name to start with. That said, some things are unclear. I have two major issues. The first is heat movement. If the meat is sitting directly over the coals, you need some sort of a deflector to prevent the meat from grilling (smoking is more like cooking with an oven). I also can't see vents. A fire needs a good supply of oxygen to burn; this requires good vents. If you have shitty vents, you'll get shitty food. With barbecue, there really is a link between how much a smoker costs and how good it is. A smoker that's $100 or less will either make shitty food or fall apart within a year. If not both. This is a mistake everyone of us has learned the hard way.

I wouldn't focus so strongly on a brisket at first. We all have our favorite things to smoke, but I strongly advocate doing your first smoke with a pack of bratwursts as well as a turkey or pork shoulder. Turkey and pork shoulder are delicious smoked, they're cheap, and they're hard to eff up. Brisket is tricky to get right. If you have tons of money and wouldn't be upset to destroy a $30+ cut of beef in maiden smoke, that's one thing. But your maiden smoke is hard. Believe me- my first time, I literally took three hours to get my rig up to temperature. I actually wondered if there was a risk that my pork shoulder spoiled on the way to being cooked (it didn't, but I'm sure I'd get a ticky mark from a health inspector). The bratwursts are there to keep you fed during the 10 hours your pork shoulder (or whatever) takes to cook.

As for chips/charcoal ratio, I would suggest you read up a bit about BBQ before starting. You really want to use hardwood lump charcoal, and you should avoid chips if at all possible. The reason is that when you buy a nice bag of hickory or cherry chips, it's probably 50-80% cut with oak. Think: how often do you drive past a stand of hickory trees? How often do you drive past a stand of oak trees? This tip and lots, lots more will be covered in any good BBQ book. I recommend two:

1. Smoke & Spice
   
2. Peace, Love, and Barbecue
   
   If you hate books : ( then there's a fantastic online resource called Amazing Ribs (which discusses all types of BBQ, including I'm sure your coveted Texas-style brisket).
   
   As I said before, don't buy wood chips. Buy chunks or logs. You'll find a few types at your local Home Depot or Lowes, and any type of wood you can't find there is available at Barbecue Wood. They're a bit pricey, but they ship anywhere in the lower 48 free. And when I say any kind of wood, I mean any. I've been itching to try some of their pecan wood; just haven't gotten around to it because I'm sitting on a big pile of hickory I don't want to get moldy.
   
   Hope that helps! Feel free to send me a PM if you want (though I'm a bit slow these days as I'm moving), and remember that at /r/BBQ you'll probably get more responses to your equipment inquiries.

My favs

Peace, Love, & Barbecue: Recipes, Secrets, Tall Tales, and Outright Lies

and amazon knows me so well the others come up on the same page (for me at least)

Franklin Barbecue: A Meat-Smoking Manifesto

Smoke & Spice, Updated and Expanded 3rd Edition: Cooking With Smoke, the Real Way to Barbecue

Meathead: The Science of Great Barbecue and Grilling

Got a slew of books, but as has already been mentioned, Amazing Ribs is my primary source for pertinent BBQ data. There is simply no better resource out there, print, binary or otherwise. It's my go-to for technique.

For recipes, I have a decent library. Here's just a few of my books: [Smoke and Spice by Cheryl and Bill Jamison](http://www.amazon.com/Smoke-Spice-Cooking-Real-Barbecue/dp/1558322620/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1343976826&sr=1-1&keywords=smoke+and+spice0, Peace, Love and BBQ by Mike Mills, Big Bob Gibson's BBQ Book by Chris Lilly, Low and Slow by Gary Wiviott, Championship Barbecue by Paul Kirk, Real Grilling by Jamie Purviance, and few specialty books like Asian Grilling by Su-Mei. All excellent resources for recipes.

Peace, Love and Barbeque

http://www.amazon.com/Peace-Love-Barbecue-Recipes-Outright/dp/1594861099/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1417791602&sr=8-1&keywords=peace%2C+love%2C+and+barbeque

The recipes in this book are fantastic, and make up the basis of many of my rub and sauce recipes.

In order to abide by the sub rules of including information, which I agree with I'll go in depth a bit more.

I recently went to 17th Street in Murphysboro, IL. Grand Champions, owner Mike Mills published a book titled Peace, Love and BBQ. I'm not going to post his recipes here because they're his, and I feel like for $15 I basically purchased rights to use it, not publish it. Anyway

These are spare ribs from Kroger, smoked at about 215F for 5.5 hours. The sauce is Cairo BBQ sauce from Cairo, IL. I was born in Southeast Missouri, so this is right around home for me and I grew up with this sauce. It's over 100 years old. I put the sauce on about 10 minutes before taking them off, recommended by Mike Mills. Previously, I had done that 30 minutes prior but the sugar in the sauce causes a burn on the meat from the melting sugar. Big tip for you noobs, like myself.

Any other questions, I'd be glad to answer.

Peace, Love and BBQ. Mike Mills, baby!