Home Appliance Reviews

I have owned a Bradley smoker for about 2 years now. I bought this unit mainly because it can cold smoke, which means you can make authentic jerky and gravlox (cold smoked salmon).

For those who don’t know anything about smoking food, there are two main techniques: hot and cold. Hot smoking, like putting wood chips on a barbecue or in hardware store smokers, depends on a fairly hot burn of wood to generate smoke. The smoker itself is generally hot enough to cook the food. However not all food should be cooked when it is smoked, such as traditional smoked salmon, cheese, nuts, sausages, etc.

I purchased a Ducane Affinity 3400 May of 2007. Previously I had owned a Weber for the 13 years. I loved my Weber but after my divorce I could not justify purchasing the Weber Genesis as badly as I wanted it. My initial thought was that since Weber now owns Ducane it would have Weber like quality and features. The Affinity seemed to have options similar to the Genesis so I thought it might make a good purchase. I ordered it on-line before they became available locally to have it in time for the grilling season. Well after a year of using this grill I have determined that it cannot and should not be associated with the Weber name; this is nothing more than a fancy Char Broil.

We needed to replace our old grill and got this one. A lot of factors convinced us this would be great. The grill is huge, considering typical grills. It is durable and has great flexibility. The cooking surface is very large, the largest of any charcoal grill I’ve ever used.

Assembly was a bit more time consuming than most grills. You have to take into consideration the large size, quality, and options available. Considering this, assembly wasn’t a bad experience. The manual was easy to understand, and all parts were easy to distunguish from other parts. If you have some experience with tools, nuts and bolts, you should have no problems.

We needed new grill this summer but budget has been quite low. Finally we decided to buy this cheap grill from Home Depot. The box was not too heavy to carry and it was pretty easy to put together. Only problem we had was with the medal rack inside under the grill, instructions did not clearly state that you have to place it in before screwing the sides together.

Other than that everything was marked and instructions have clear pictures of how to install parts together, it took me and my husband about 40 minutes to build everything together.

I was very impressed with this purchase. I read some reviews online, some flattering, some not-so-much. But I figured for 40-50 bucks, you really can’t go wrong. I actually found it for $28.98 at my local Walmart.And it was well worth the purchase price!

I am an avid griller but had never smoked anything before. So i was looking for something cheap that I could do a little experimenting with.

It was a little awkward getting some of the pieces to fit together(mainly the handles). But all-in-all was an easy assembly process.

Originally I had desired to purchase a shiny new stainless steel grill with all the bells and whistles for about $350. But after reading all the reviews on grills I quickly learned that most do not use quality materials and use cheap quality stainless steel that will discolor and begin to rust from the start. (If you want to know if it is quality stainless, use a magnet, if the magnet sticks to the stainless, it is the lower grade stainless). One thing that was consistent in all the reviews was that Weber makes quality grills with superior materials that produce excellent cooking results. The next thing I learned was that you will pay for that quality. There is nothing cheap about a Weber including the price. Despite the fact that I had my heart set on a shiny stainless model, I decided Weber was the way I really should go. This was reinforced by friends and co-workers that owned Weber grills who could not praise them highly enough. Since I still did not want to spend more than $350, I selected the Weber Q320.

I call my Weber smoker, R2 since it looks like the character from Star Wars. First of all, I’d like to point out that I have 7 barbecue units. 5 are charcoal grills and 2 are small propane units. I love grilling and barbecuing (aka smoking). Before buying this Weber unit, I already had a horizontal grill/smoker which I really enjoy working with, but sometimes using it to smoke two racks of ribs was overkill. I did some research on several barbecue forums and the unit that was recommended the most was the Weber Smokey Mountain.

This is a fantastic unit that won’t let you down. It will work as a grill, rotisserie and a smoker with no problem. Before you buy it, decide if you are going to smoke meat. If you are, you may as well buy the optional side fire box. You’ll also want to bring a truck or van when you pick up the grill because it is large. Bring a friend along, too, because it is heavy.

This was my first large size grill that I had ever purchased (I now own seven grills - two of which are for smoking). I was initially sold on the fact that it can be used as a grill and a smoker. However, after using it to smoke some meat, I’ve moved on purchased two other smokers. I have since turned this grill into my dedicated rotisserie.

Putting together the grill was very simple. Shouldn’t take any more than 30-45 minutes. After your done, these are the features you’ll see: