Alan's smoked brisket.

Instructions:

1. Let’s rub some olive oil and meat spice well into your choice of meat, be generous.
2. If you have enough time before hand, let the meat fridge dry overnight.
3. Now you can start to make a fire in your Megamaster Smoker, a medium sized fire is perfect. The best is to use a quality charcoal NEVER Briquettes. 
4. Place the prepared meat in the smoker.
5. Using wood smoke to flavour your food is just like using any other natural ingredient. Add a flavoured wood or large chunks of herbs like rosemary or thyme to your fire to get a nice smoke going. You can also soak wood chips in red wine or diluted brandy and coke and use these to get that smoke effect.
6. You use this intense smoke for about 2 hours, after that you keep the fire going with charcoal. 
7. This initial fire should be between the 150 – 200-degree mark, don’t be tempted to make the fire too hot.
8. Once you have reached the intense smoke bring the temperature of the smoker down to around the 130-degree mark.

How do you do this?

1. There are two temperature regulating vents on the smoker, the one being on the side of the where you make the fire and the other on top of the chimney. Fire needs air and by restricting the airflow we can control the temperature. 
2. It’s important to control the heat while smoking. So, when starting the fire you want both vents wide open so that the smoke draws through. And as you want to start controlling the heat close the vents to where the air gaps are small enough that the fire still can burn but at a controlled rate. Watch the temperature gauge to see how effective you are in managing the vents. It takes some time, but you will soon get the hang of it.
3. All to do now is keep checking that there is a small fire going and that the temperature remains between the 100 – 130-degree mark. 
4. At the halfway mark in this process, you can wrap the meat in tinfoil to retain the juice in the meat. Return the meat to the smoker.
5. Take note: you can put quite a lot of charcoal into the fire and then close the vents to where they are only a few millimetres open, this way you don’t have to keep topping up on charcoal every few minutes. But please keep your eye on the thermometer.
6. At about 9 hours in you are now going to stoke the fire one last time and let it burn down. Leave the meat in the smoker and let it cool down slowly with the dying coals.
7. As you let time pass, as you are waiting for the coals to cool down. Remove the meat from the tinfoil (try keeping all the juice to pour over the meat once you have carved it). Heat up the smoker and let the meat heat up on a medium heat for another hour or so.
8. We have never been so ready! You can start to carve your meat; the best is an electric carving knife as you are not putting downward pressure on the soft meat and the serrated blades saw through without breaking up the meat. A very sharp breadknife is second best.
9. Pour any juices back over the meat as this is pure flavour.