First time smokenator brisket

[chuck1221]

I am cooking a brisket on the smokenator for the first time this saturday and wanted to go through the procedure with some people that have done it on the smokenator before. I did a couple racks of ribs a couple weeks ago and had no problem holding temps on the smokenator.

It is actually half a brisket and is 7.5 lbs that I got at a local meat market. I've read to cook it at around 225 on the cooking grate till the internal temp is about 165 the foil and continue to cook till 190 - 200. My question is how long should I add wood to it and actually smoke it? and I have apple, cherry, maple, hickory, and mesquite woods, any advice on what kinds to use for this cut? I already have a dry rub for it so thats taken care of. also I have read to cook it for roughly 1 1/2 hrs per pound. also wrap and let rest for 1 - 2 hours before serving.

Any tips or suggestions would be great. I have all day saturday to relax and smoke this thing. and drink a little beer

Thanks,

Chuck

[paulito]

I'm looking to do the same here soon, how'd it come out Chuck, and any other tips & suggestions would be fantastic!

[chuck1221]

It came out great. Pretty amazing for my first time I must say. I did pretty much as what I had posted however the about the last hour I let it heat up to about 300 degrees while it was in foil to get done. It took about 12 full hours to do. I foiled it at 163 degrees. It had great flavor and I wouldn't want it any more tender unless I was going to pull it for sandwiches. The only thing I could recommend is to take it out of the foil at the end to let bark firm up a little more and maybe get a little char on it for the flavor. Next I think i'm gonna try a pork butt for pulled pork sandwiches.

Chuck

[pcobee]

Just used my Smokenator for the first time and chose to do a whole brisket - packer cut - for our Christmas meal. I did a lot of reading on forums and read the instructions but had a rather different experience than a lot of what I had read. I took the advice of using a very good cut - a 6.5 pound "prime" whole brisket from Fresh Market. I did not make a dry run with my Weber - the wife told me to just go for it!



I pulled the brisket out about 6:30 in the morning and let it sit for about an hour to warm up a little. I then lathered it up with Woeber's Sweet & Spicy Mustard and let it sit about 30 minutes while I prepared the Smokenator on my grill. I loaded the Smokenator all the way with Kingsford charcoal as I used a larger pan for water that sat on the grill above the Smokenator - following another user's great advice. I then pulled out 20 coals and got them started in the charcoal starter.



For a rub, I found two A1 Dry Rubs - Garlic & Classic Herbs and Cracked Peppercorn which I mixed together and added probably about a 1/2 cup of brown sugar. After rubbing this in, the starter coals were ready so I poured them into the Smokenator, added a couple of chunks of mesquite and positioned the larger water pan above the where the normal water tray would sit. After letting the dome temperature get up over 200 degrees I placed the brisket on grill and inserted a digital thermometer that gives me both the internal temperature of the meat as well as the ambient temperature beside the meat. This thing saved the day! I used a second digital thermometer with a wireless remote to monitor the dome temperature.



Here's where things went quite a bit different from what I had read. The dome temperature continued to rise to well over 300 degrees however the digital thermometer inserted into the meat - the one that also gave the ambient temperature - continued to read about 160 to 170 - well below the 10-20 degree difference that the instructions said you could expect! Even after about an hour and a half, the temperature at the grill remained a good 140-150 degrees cooler that the dome temperature - only inches away. At this point, I had to decide whether or not to trust the digital thermometers. We had a candy thermometer so I inserted that into the upper vent and it confirmed the dome temperature that the wireless thermometer was reporting. I decided to trust both digital thermometers and for the next 6 hours or so added charcoal, mesquite and water maintaining the grill level temperature as close to 180 to 210 degrees as I could. The dome temperature was always 140 to 150 degrees above that reading! When the meat reached 160, I pulled it out and wrapped it in tin foil for the next 2 hours still trying to maintain 180 to 200 at grill level.



At 8 hours, the meat temperature was only reading about 172 degrees and the boys were getting hungry. My wife had been cooking some corn bread in the oven at 400 so I pulled the brisket out, placed it in the oven and turned the temperature down to 300. The temperature finally started to rise slowly so I cut the oven off and let it climb to 190 - took about 45 minutes - and pulled it out to rest for about 30 minutes. The final temperature read 195 when we took the foil off to cut it. I was a little worried that we might have a chunk of leather so, as I prepared to cut into it, contemplations of duck in a Chinese restaurant with a couple of guys singing Fa-ra-ra-ra-ra loomed in my head!



Well, all I can say is that it was fantastic. It was surprisingly moist and tender and the flavor was incredible.



My only explanation for the dome/grill temperature differences is due to my Weber. The lower vents had long ago disintegrated and I seemed to have some slight leakage between the cover and bottom of the grill - must be time for a new one. The top vent was my only option for regulating the grill temperature. If it had not been for the digital thermometer that could monitor both the meat temperature and ambient grill temperature AT THE MEAT we would have had a disaster.



The only other advice I can add to the dual purpose digital thermometer - and get one with a wireless remote as mine does not - is to grill a brisket and pimento cheese sandwich for lunch the next day!