First Brisket

When the sun comes up, I'll take a few on the smoker. Didn't feel like looking for the camera before 6:00A.M. .... Anyway, I'll definitely have pics of the finished product.

Exciting stuff, I could hardly sleep last night thinking about brisket. I've done a few dozen butts, so hopefully they taught me something, we'll see.

Ok, so, it's been 10 hours. I'm a bit worried. The brisket is up to 180 in the thick part and it is falling apart tender, and tastes great. The thin part (the flat right?) is sitting around 180 too, but is not even close to tender. There are parts that are fairly fork tender, others are, while edible, a bit tougher than I would like. Does it just need to cook longer or did I dry that bad boy out.

Hoping for quick responses here and working on the q-view.

Back for an update. Never got a chance to get out the camera since the wife made me do yard work and I got busy.

So, this never happened. May not be as terrible as it sounds.

Brisket cooked a total of 12 hours. Thick part reached 195. About 3/4 of it was great. Tender and falling apart. The thick part was pulled, the thin sliced. The last 1/4 of the flat was a bit dry, though still pretty good. Is that normal? When pulling, it seemed like I could have actually cooked it a bit longer, since there was still a good bit of fat between the fibers that had to be separated for pulling. Sound right? I stopped cooking b/c I didn't wan't the flat to dry out too much.

I'll admit, the temp spiked a few times to about 280, though normally stayed closer to 240. Plus, this being an un-tuned SnP, the brisket cooked perhaps a bit hotter than that the first 5 hours (it was closest to the firebox for the first 1/2 of the cook, and the probe was between it and the butt).

Next time, the butt will probably get the warmer part, I know it can take it. As usual, the butt came out great and was a hit with the inlaws. The brisket was more for experimentation purposes since it seemed like a waste to use all that charcoal with only 10lbs of meat.

BTW, used apple then a chunk of hickory at the end when I ran out of apple.


EDIT: Thanks William, you give me hope the next will be even better.