New Pellet Smoker owner

[bigredx24x]

Hello smoking brethren -

In the world of smoking, I'm still pretty much a noob. I borrowed a friends BGE for a year (he moved to a condo and couldn't have it anymore) and learned to smoke pork shoulder on it. The BGE made some great stuff, but it was a lot of baby-sitting (maybe it was due to the user). Anyway, he took back the BGE about 6 months ago and since then I've been wanting to get a new smoker.

As much as I loved the BGE, I didn't like the manual nature of setting the temp and the high price. Thus, I started looking at pellet smokers. I also wanted to be able to monitor the grill temp and meat temps remotely, so I wanted a wifi-enabled smoker. After doing some research I ended up getting a GMG Daniel Boone w/ Wifi.

I recently did my first smoke and I did a Pork Shoulder and a Brisket. This is the first time I attempted Brisket. I set it to 225, put foil around Brisket about 4 hours in, and took both off around 9 hours in when brisket was at 200 and pork shoulder was 203. Pork turned out great! The bark was fantastic! I used Byron's butt rub and really enjoyed that. The brisket on the other hand was not the best. It had a nice smoke ring, but I think it got dried out somehow. Honestly, don't know when I'll attempt another brisket. Considering it's so much more expencive (when compared to pork shoulder) and harder to cook, not sure it's worth it. Anyway, excited to be a member of this forum and take any tips you guys can give me. Happy smoking!

 

[Fade2Blacc]

Didn't see it in your post, but did you give the brisket ample amount of time to rest before cutting into it?

 

[bigredx24x]

Actually, I was cooking it in advance for Christmas dinner, so cooked 2 days ahead (not my preference). So, anyway, for the brisket, when I took it off, I opened up the foil and there was a lot of juice - I had injected the brisket w/ Beef broth so I believe it was a combo of that and fat. Anyway, I was concerned that it might taste like a roast if I left all that juice still in there, so I removed it and save it in a container for when I warmed it up Christmas evening. Then I rewrapped it in foil and placed it in a cooler for two hours. After that, I removed foil, wrapped it very tightly in plastic wrap and stored in fridge for 2 days.

To warm it back up...I placed in foil pan, poored back in the sauce I had saved, set oven to 300...heated it up to 150 (took 2 hours).

 

[gary s]

Good morning and welcome to the forum from a nice chilly sunny day here in East Texas, and the best site on the web. Lots of great people with tons of information on just about everything.

Gary