Brisket Success for the 4th!

[Spliner]

So.. last time I did a brisket I messed it up and ended up having to finish it in a crock pot and shred it.  I think last time I had my meat probes in a fat vein and it didn't get to the right temp.  This time I was careful to have 2 probes, one in the point and one in the flat.  Never could get a decent read in the point, it always read 20F hotter than the flat, so I went by the flat temp and it turned out great.  As is customary, here are the pics:

So, this was about a 10.5lb packer, butcher already had it mostly trimmed.. just a bit to take off where the point meets the flat (trimmings are on the top).  This left about a 1/4" fat cap on the other side (sorry forgot to take a pic of that side after trimming):




Honestly, I was going to do ribs this year, but these were on sale:



No special rub this time.. just some rub I had left over along with Heinz new yellow mustard.  Honestly, I had grand plans of using Pachanga's recipe, but with grand kids running around all weekend and running out of time, I went with what I had on hand.  Not a bad thing, turned out wonderful anyway:



So.. rubbed both sides thoroughly, let it sit for a few.. added more rub until it seemed it would take no more lol.. time for the yellow mustard, fairly heavy coat.. both sides:




Ready and waiting for the smoker.  I let it sit out for about a total of 45 minutes, and started pre-heating the Bradley smoker before I started trimming the brisket.  So pre-heat time was almost an hour.  Brisket is a huge hunk of muscle meat, so even sitting out at room temp for almost an hour (we keep it about 74F in the house) internal temp was about 50-55F when it finally went in the smoker. 




So, bend it a bit into an upside down U shape to fit on the Bradley rack (didn't take much, this was sot of a short brisket, smallest one the store had):



Using old trusty.. Hickory:



As you can see in the pics above I used Pachanga's instructions to keep the rub and mustard from being rubbed off on the surface of my cutting board.  Used an inverted Bradley rack, with another Bradley rack for the brisket to sit in while rubbing so that the surface of the brisket didn't directly touch the cutting board.  Worked beautifully.

So.. got busy when I put it in the smoker and forgot to take those pics.  But Brisket went in on the third rack in my New OBS and the trimmings went on a rack by themselves above the brisket on the top rack so they would render and drip down onto the brisket (as suggested in Pachanga's instructions).  Here's a pic of the brisket right after it hit 195F in the flat, right before FTC:



Smells wonderfu!



So.. I started this thing about 8:30PM at night on July 3rd, and it finished about 5:30AM on the 4th.  I was worried it would take a really long time so I started it likely too early but I hate leaving the Bradley going unattended at night so I attempted to stay up all night with it.  I'll admit, I dozed off a bunch of times but had to re-fill the water bowl twice during the cook.  OBS was all the way on full blast until the first water refill.  I let the cabinet recover and it was creeping up around 260ish so I turned it down one notch on the dial.  After the second water bowl refill around 2AM it recovered again to a little over 250ish on the Bradley dial so I turned it down another half notch and left it there until it finished.  Temp control, at least for me, on the OBS is usually just full blast unless it recovers too fast and gets too hot.  I do have one brick in the bottom of mine to help with recovery. 

So.. at 5:30AM (again no pics of this part, but I think most people here get the idea) I FTC'd until I was ready to slice around noon when I got my tired butt out of bed.  At noon I sliced it thin, wrapped it in foil, added a bit of the drippings I had saved in the FTC foil to keep it moist, and replaced the fat cap I trimmed off before slicing back over the top of the brisket and let it cool.  In the fridge it went until around 4PM when we pulled it and put it in the oven at 375 for about an hour.  The extra fat cap rendered out a little more and kept it moist, so right about 5:00 I pulled it, removed the fat cap covering the sliced brisket, gave it a thin coat of Sweet Baby Ray's (my family's favorite!), and put it under the broiler for about 3-5 minutes to set on the sauce.  My family and I are not purists lol, we slather it all in BBQ sauce.  However, the brisket didn't need it at all, it was wonderfully flavorful by itself.  It was a big hit and was wonderfully tender, and not dry at all (final pic here after the family had their first serving):



And of course.. the sections of the point that weren't able to be sliced well, got chopped and added to some Bush's Hickory and Brown Sugar beans and baked along side the brisket while it was re-heating:




Anyway this was my first successful brisket in the Bradley.  There were a few sections of the point that were still a little tough, but for the most part it was all very tender.  Perfect for slicing.

Hope everyone had a great 4th!

Spliner

[watchdog56]

Looks great.

[Smoker John]

That looks terrific, nice write up.

[tskeeter]

Spliner, I've come up with a way of not having to babysit the water in the puck bowl during overnight smokes.  I replace the puck bowl with a foil covered foil pan.  Cut a hole about the size of the puck bowl in the foil covering to allow the pucks to drop in and to allow for some evaporation of the water, the way water in the puck bowl would evaporate.  Then fill the foil pan about 3/4 of the way with boiling water.  There is enough water in the foil pan to collect a lot of spent pucks and to keep the pan from going dry for close to eight hours.

[Pachanga]

That is a righteous looking smoke.  Great bark and color.

Nice job.  Thanks for sharing.

Good luck and slow smoking,

Pachanga

[Spliner]

I'll have to give the foil covered drip pan a try.  I use foil covered bricks though to help recover temps, so may have to figure out how to fit those in as well but I could always just put them on the bottom rack.  Thanks for the tip tskeeter!

Spliner

[tskeeter]

I'll have to give the foil covered drip pan a try.  I use foil covered bricks though to help recover temps, so may have to figure out how to fit those in as well but I could always just put them on the bottom rack.  Thanks for the tip tskeeter!

Spliner

When I replace the puck bowl with a foil pan, I move my smoking bricks to the v-tray.  Set them on edge against the sides of the smoker, where they are pretty much away from what is dripping down.  I've also been known to put the smoking bricks in a tray that goes in above the meat.  Probably not quite as effective as having them lower in the smoker, but they'll still help with heat recovery some.