So cooked another brisket yesterday. I took the following steps:
- 10 lb prime brisket took 13.5 hours to cook in a BGE @ 225
- Used hickory and pecan
- Spritz every hour
- Wrapped in pink butcher paper at 160 after having spent an hour or two in the stall
- Took brisket off at 202 degrees
- Let brisket sit for an hour before serving

My brisket failed the "Pull test" and was sort of dry - particularly the flat. The point was okay, but I've definitely had better brisket. I'm just not sure what I'm doing wrong anymore. I've cooked 4 briskets and each of them have not been that great. Not sure if I'm overthinking it or what, but I'm a stubborn person and will continue to try until I solve this riddle.

Does anyone have any critiques or suggestions with my method?

Help is appreciated.

Pull at 203.

RightWingConspirator said:

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So cooked another brisket yesterday. I took the following steps:
- 10 lb prime brisket took 13.5 hours to cook in a BGE @ 225
- Used hickory and pecan
- Spritz every hour
- Wrapped in pink butcher paper at 160 after having spent an hour or two in the stall
- Took brisket off at 202 degrees
- Let brisket sit for an hour before serving

My brisket failed the "Pull test" and was sort of dry - particularly the flat. The point was okay, but I've definitely had better brisket. I'm just not sure what I'm doing wrong anymore. I've cooked 4 briskets and each of them have not been that great. Not sure if I'm overthinking it or what, but I'm a stubborn person and will continue to try until I solve this riddle.

Does anyone have any critiques or suggestions with my method?

Help is appreciated.

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I have been going with Aaron Franklin's recommendation of 250-275 temp. I also do not let it sit in the stall for a couple of hours before wrapping. If you are using a probe thermo, wrap it as soon as it starts to stall. I pull mine at 198, wrap in towels and drop in a cooler for at least two hours. Been pretty consistently good with that method. Just my humble two cents from a fellow smoker.

I think 225 is too low. I like to smoke brisket at 260-280

Not sure if it is the reason it turned out bad but regardless I'd stop the spritzing.

Just leave it alone and open your pit just a couple times over the cook. That open and close every hour doesn't let you get and keep a consistent temp.

I'd also say go ahead and raise your temp to 275 and make sure your burning clean blue smoke. At 225 I imagine it's tough to get that good clean smoke and that may be why it's dry.

Agree with Ag_07. If you are wanting more humidity you can add a water pan to the chamber. I use one that is in the smoke path it works well and keeps you from opening the grill so much.

As mentioned above, crank the heat to 275. The temps are more of a suggestion than a rule. Wrap when the bark looks the way you want it. Pull brisket when it probes butter soft. Every cow, every brisket, every cook is going to be slightly different.

http://texags.com/forums/34/topics/2856114

10 years ago many here on the outdoor board recommended pulling your brisket off the grill 195ish, maybe 200. I know this because that's when I got my first smoker and started cooking brisket. Then Aaron Franklin says he usually pulls his briskets off at 203 and then I started noticing more and more people start recommending closer to that. Nothing wrong with that if it works for you. I've tried it and the flat on my briskets are more dry if I let them go over 200. I usually take mine off at 195 or 196 and carryover heat gets them up to about 200. The point on mine is usually good either temp(195 or 203), where I see the most difference is the flat. Just something to try.

I have noticed the same. Franklin is using premium prime briskets. They will naturally be more moist in the flats and can handle more heat.

Depends on your grill too, cooking with my Rectec at 250F cooks it too fast with no bark so now I do 225F until 160F and then once I wrap it (in butcher paper) I jack it up to 250F.

I would start going by feel at 200F (I normally pull 203-205F) and then I put it straight in a cooler for at least 2 hours. Doing my probe check by feel it feels like putting the probe in butter.

Another poster mentioned it already, I also use Aaron Franklin's brisket technique. If you haven't seen his 2 part youtube series from his TV show on brisket, check it out and do exactly what he says. I just started smoking on a PrimoXL (a ceramic like your BGE) when COVID hit and I was stuck at home.

Bought the PrimoXL and then bought his book and watched all his youtube stuff. Did a 15 lb choice packer a few weeks ago from start to finish and it was really really good. So maybe I just got lucky, will have to see how the next one turns out. But that's the fun of it, right?

FWIW he suggests 250-275 for cook temp, closer or at 275 if he has to pick a number. Hang in there.

I guess I am in the minority here, but I still smoke my meats using an old school offset. That said, I keep the temp in the 250 range, give or take 40 degrees(the temp will go up around 40 degrees when I add a piece or two of wood every 30 minutes). I wrap the brisket when 2 things are achieved: 1) the bark looks like I want it to, and 2) the internal temp is at least 160.

I mop my brisket every 30 minutes or so, this have never slowed the process down. I feel it greatly enhances the flavor once wrapped. I also think it keeps the brisket more moist (may just be anecdotal, but my briskets always turn out moist throughout).

I remove the brisket when, three things are achieved: 1) internal temp at least 195, 2) it wobbles like jello, and 3) a fork goes in smoothly and is at least slightly "twistable". I don't put a fork into the brisket until the first two are met, to ensure minimal loss of heat due to the punctures.

As for wood, I use oak and mesquite. More mesquite at the beginning (I love a hint of mesquite, but too much can get a bit bitter), and then more oak until I wrap it. Then mostly mesquite, since I have a lot of mesquite.

this video may help. This guy has been pitmaster at several places in Texas, including Franklin's. pretty useful stuff. his videos/comments are very informative and help teach the science behind cooking bbq

I forgot to mention that I did use a water pan and was smoking a Prime brisket. The taste was good, but it was just too dry. I also was wondering how you get the point up to 203 without cooking the flat way too much?

My flat was really dry. The point was okay.

My offset cooker has always cooked my briskets with the point being hotter than the flats. The point does take the brunt of the heat, but I'm usually waiting on my flat to come up to temp last so that I can take the brisket off.

Also I don't buy Prime anymore. Waste of money. You can get just as good, if not better, select briskets. Just look for solid marbling in the flat and the most uniformly thick flat you can find. Given the information on how you cooked it, I'd say the missing piece to this equation was a flat that was proportionately too thin/irregular/small compared to the point.

I don't pull by temp, I pull by touch. IMO some briskets are done at 196 and some need to go to 205+. Each piece of meat is different. I simply put three fingers on the middle of the brisket and just jiggle it a little. You can tell when it is done (much like you can with a steak).

A couple of other opinions of mine:

- Resting a cooked brisket in a cooler (leave it in the butcher paper & wrap it with a towel) for several hours is a must. Letting it rest has yielded consistently better results for me, & it is easier to serve groups that way (you don't have top cut it all up, you can slice it for each person so it doesn't dry out after slicing). you can rest it for as little as 2 hours, I have yet to find the upper limit on that time (I have had them in a cooler as long as 6 hours and they were incredible).

- I am a big believer in the "bend test" when selecting my briskets at the store. Makes a huge difference IMO. Selecting a good brisket is every bit as important (if not more so) than how you cook it.

- Don't overthink it, brisket is a simple cook at the end of the day. Don't worry about spritzing, I'm not sure you gain much from it and the heat loss will just extend your cook time. I had a cooking partner that used to say "looking ain't cooking". Solid advice.

Been said already, but if you're looking you ain't cooking. By no means an expert, but I'd back all the way off with the spritzing. If the stall is caused by evaporation cooling from the breakdown of collagen, spritzing it is just going to keep your meat cooler longer, plus the humidity and oxygen level changes will jack with your bark. Throw a pan of water in for humidity

I usually go 225 until internal temp of 140 (to maximize the amount of time actually smoking), and then bump to 250-275. Open the smoker once to wrap it around 155-160. Then again to see if it's done around 200. Started having much more success focusing on pulling the meat once it decides it's done (i.e. probe falls through it) vs pulling at a specific number.

If you are using Prime, you need to modify your cooking procedure accordingly. Prime will cook much faster because of the fat. I smoke at a higher temp for 6-8 hours, actual cook time depending on when it's done. I go by touch, too, and learned the hard way that Prime does better when it's not on the smoker as long.

When you say it's bad, does that mean just dry? Or flavor off, too? Lack of bark? Lots of things can make a brisket "bad"...

A few things I haven't seen mentioned:

1) Are you trimming the brisket first? If so, you may be trimming too much of the fat off or even trimming the edges incorrectly. Especially on a prime, which tends to cook faster, have more marbling, but less fat cap.

2) I don't like BGEs, but I've had good brisket from others cooking on them. On an offset, I let the fire normalize for an hour before any meat will go on it. It lets you get clean blue smoke in there. I can't comment on BGEs though. I don't even wrap typically.

3) Everyone has their own opinion on smoking wood flavors, but I hate pecan on beef. I'll let some hickory in there every now and then if I'm having trouble finding seasoned wood, but I'm almost exclusively oak with a small touch of mesquite.

Agree with everyone who said to cut out the spritzing. I don't mop, either. Same with don't cook to a certain temp. A combination of temp and feel (temp probe insert or fork twist) is what I use.

Simplify your cooking and reduce the number of variables to start. Then you can add in a step, etc... experiment. That's how Franklin has such a tight control on his brisket final product. Choose good meat, have a repeatable process with simple rub and simple steps, and fine tune it from there. Franklin wasn't always "Salt n pepper, post oak, 275 temp, etc...." he got there by trying different things. Isolate variables and only change one at a time to see what works for you.

How did it "fail" the pull test? If it was still tough and not tender then you needed more time/heat to render more fat (would also probably help some with moisture content and dryness) to soften it up some more. Remember much of what we perceive as moisture is rendered fat, not just straight water itself so make sure you are properly cooking it to the right tenderness.

And I'll go against the 6 people who starred the first comment and say you should NOT pull at 203 every time. Each one will finish differently and pulling at the exact same temp every time is a recipe for disaster.

Keep at it, you're only 4 briskets in. There's a reason we are all backyard hacks and not the next Franklin opening our own bbq joint. It's takes a lot of trial and error to get really good at bbqing, it's an art not a science.

RCR06 said:

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10 years ago many here on the outdoor board recommended pulling your brisket off the grill 195ish, maybe 200. I know this because that's when I got my first smoker and started cooking brisket. Then Aaron Franklin says he usually pulls his briskets off at 203 and then I started noticing more and more people start recommending closer to that. Nothing wrong with that if it works for you. I've tried it and the flat on my briskets are more dry if I let them go over 200. I usually take mine off at 195 or 196 and carryover heat gets them up to about 200. The point on mine is usually good either temp(195 or 203), where I see the most difference is the flat. Just something to try.

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This and let them sit in a cooler wrapped for a couple of hour as was said before

Please explain what you mean with the bend test when at the store picking through choice packers.

dr_boogs said:

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Please explain what you mean with the bend test when at the store picking through choice packers.

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Heres a good run down:

https://www.bbq-brethren.com/forum/archive/index.php/t-218381.html

Got it, thanks. Although those guys took longer than I thought for the thread to devolve into a floppy packer bromance.

I had this same problem until I started smoking at 250+.

The smoke ring and flavor are not impacted by the higher temp.

You guys are going to **** all over this but I've found it really helpful to pre separate the flat and the point. I cook them together like a packer but it allows me to pull the flat when it's done and the point when it's done. Best of both worlds...I get the benefit of cooking a packer but also get to pull each cut when it feels right.

Sooner Born said:

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You guys are going to **** all over this but I've found it really helpful to pre separate the flat and the point. I cook them together like a packer but it allows me to pull the flat when it's done and the point when it's done. Best of both worlds...I get the benefit of cooking a packer but also get to pull each cut when it feels right.

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Someone will crap on this, because, well, that's what we do.

But this is an excellent suggestion and approach.

I usually pull it off around 196 or so, but use the feel and sometimes fork twist.

If you do rely heavily on a temp probe, make sure it's reading correctly. It's not unusual for them to be off some. Easy check is putting it in boiling water and seeing if you are at 212.

Sooner Born said:

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You guys are going to **** all over this but I've found it really helpful to pre separate the flat and the point. I cook them together like a packer but it allows me to pull the flat when it's done and the point when it's done. Best of both worlds...I get the benefit of cooking a packer but also get to pull each cut when it feels right.

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I think this is a damn good idea & im going to try it soon.

There's only three of us in the house, so if we aren't having company, I'll pick up just a point for us.

I didn't see this in your original post or in any replies. Make sure you have a heat barrier between the fire and the brisket. I believe the big green egg comes with a ceramic one, but just in case you were not aware, you need that in there. This ensures the brisket is only getting indirect heat, not direct (radiant) heat.

Sooner Born said:

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You guys are going to **** all over this but I've found it really helpful to pre separate the flat and the point. I cook them together like a packer but it allows me to pull the flat when it's done and the point when it's done. Best of both worlds...I get the benefit of cooking a packer but also get to pull each cut when it feels right.

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I recently started separating the 2 muscles and get much better results.

Why is a brisket like a writing desk

Once you wrap your brisket how do you judge it by "look" and or "feel"? Do you unwrap periodically to check it? Do you probe it thru the wrap? This is a part I haven't quite figured out yet.