noobie brisket smoking questions

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dogvila

Newbie
Original poster
Aug 19, 2014
5
11
so im going to try and smoke my first brisket, don't have a ton of smoking experience but I figured what the hell.  I have a full packer about 10ish lbs and will be attempting to do it on my weber kettle.  Will be keeping my kettle temp between 225 and 235 F using kingsford briquettes and oak/apple wood for my smoke.  Was planning on foiling it around 165-170 and than letting it cook until somewhere around 190-200.

so a couple questions before my first attempt...

I have it in the fridge now with a rub on it, do I need to take it out and let it get to room temp or anything like that or just take directly out of fridge and put on kettle?

Ive never smoked anything this large and long, how much of the cook time should I be putting smoke on the meat?   the entire cooking time? half?

with the full packer im assuming I foil the entire thing and don't separate the point from the flat until that flat is completely cooked?

does the point need to rest before cutting up to make burnt ends?

now as far as timing this thing to be done somewhere around dinner time..... I know all meats are different but what has been your guys experience for the time it takes to cook a 10lb brisket?

if your brisket is done cooking say 4-6 hours before people come over for dinner how do you keep it warm with out drying out and overcooking?

thanks in advanced for any help you can give me it much appreciated!
 
You'll get 100 different opinions if you ask 100 different people, but here are my opnions:

-I don't worry about getting it to room temperature. The amount of time it'd take for 10+ lbs to warm up makes it impractical, and I'm not sure it makes that much of a difference.

-I use only wood chunks (no charcoal), so I'll obviously say you should keep smoke on it the whole time.

-I don't foil wrap while cooking, but I do wrap with butcher paper around 165-170 IT. You are correct in saying keep the flat and point together throughout the cook.

-I've never made burnt ends, but I'd let the point cool down a good bit before cutting it up. It needs to rest before slicing into it for any reason.

-I estimate an hour and half per pound, although that obviously varies depending on multiple factors including uniformity of thickness of the brisket, temp, etc.

-If it's done early (which, you want to give yourself at least an hour for it to rest post-cook in my experience), I wrap it in foil and put it in a cooler. It'll stay warm/hot for a long time that way.

Good luck!
 
thanks for the response!

Im nearing the end of my cook right now.  I ended up starting the cook keeping temps between 205 and 235, wanted to keep the temps a little tighter but once I put the brisket on the weber I had a little bit of a hard time getting it back up to temp.  I was a little worried about getting it up to 140 in the 4 hour time that I had read about for food safety reasons but ended up getting to that temp in that time.

smoked it with apple/oak chunks for a little over 8 hours, wasn't sure about this but from what ive read its easy to over smoke the meat and make it have a bad taste? so I opted for less smoke until I can get a better handle on what my set up and smoke will do to a large slab of meat.

hit that temperature sticking point at 153 degrees, it actually went down a couple of degrees than went back up.  took about 4 hours to get past that temp sticking point is that normal?

I did have to add more briquettes at one point so my kettle temp went down than had a huge swing and got up to around 300 for about 15-20 mins.  I added some cold water to my pan and that seemed to bring my temps down and level them off around 260-275.  that was probably about 3 hours into the time where my temp was stuck around 153.  I had read that people sometimes cook it that high so I didn't worry too much about it.

foiled the entire packer around 165-167 and it is now sitting in the kettle, had to throw some more briquettes in, my temps are around 275-285 hope that's not too high.

looked like it had a nice bark on it and it smelled fantastic.

will those large temp swings mess with outcome of the meat texture/ moistness?

going into hour 13, if nothing else it was an experience!
 
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well some early reports are in, separated the flat from the point, let the point rest for about 30 mins then started to cut it up to make burnt ends, had a pretty nice pink smoke ring on it, was super tender... the point and the flat separated with almost no effort, pretty much stuck my chefs knife into where the fat separates the two piece of meat and it almost just fell right off..... stuck it in a foil container rubbed it down, mixed some meat dripping juice with some amazing home made bbq sauce from the recipe provided by another member billbo and threw it all back on the kettle.  flat is resting for a couple hours in a cooler.

not going to lie HEUbrewer, it wasn't as easy as I thought it was going to be, saw some people on youtube do the snake method of charcoal and said it held 225 for 10 hours or somthn like that with no problems piece of cake kind of thing.... definitely was not the case for me.  the snake worked well for a little while then it was a mad scramble to figure out how to get more charcoal in there properly.... after I got that squared away it went much smoother... a couple beers probably helped smooth that out as well........... it was past noon
 
Hello , Dogvila. Don't know if you've done the cook or not , however when you do get it done , send some Q-view. A must or -
worthless.gif
.

Let us know how long it too and your procedures.  It takes a lot of patience and time , but if you are willing , a marvelous meal awaits you.

Have fun and . . .
 

this is after 5 or 6 hours I think, temps started around 205 but I was able to get it up closer to 225-235 eventually


this is after about 13 hours.  hit my internal temp of 165 so I foiled it and threw I back on until it hit 195.


burnt ends mixed in with the juice from the foiled flat and some home made BBQ sauce (recipe provided by member billbo on a different thread)...... amazing


this is a terrible picture of the slices paired with home made kraft mac and chees ... this is the leftovers a day after and reheated, still good but wow were they yummy when first sliced!  Was my wife's first experience eating brisket and she was mad there wasn't more leftovers and wants to do another one soon!

all in all pretty happy with my first attempt at my 10lb brisket
 
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