On Monday I decided to go for it. I had been smoking. Things on my smoker for awhile and figured I had it all figured out and to prove it I decided to smoke a brisket. I had read about it and the fact that if done right it’s the most amazing piece of smoked meat you can eat. I had wanted to do this for awhile, but I wanted to wait until I decided that I had it all figured out. Monday was the day. So over the weekend I picked up a 10 lb brisket ( a firm believer in go big or go home) and an extra box of red oak. I had the spices in my cabinet, so I figured I was all set. Plan was to start the day at 6:00 am to get the fire going so that I could have the meat on by 7:30. Figuring roughly 10 hours to cook that would let me pull it off at around 5:00 pm. With it sitting for an hour we would be dining at 6:00 pm after which I would be able to accept the accolades of my children on the amazing job that I did.
So Monday morning I hopped out of bed at precisely 7:15 am (uh-oh) and went to the kitchen, I pulled the brisket from the refrigerator took it out of the package and began to trim it down. As my guide I followed the recommendations I found in my Franklin Barbeque book and started to even out the brisket. Lots of good tips in the book and I think for the most part the trim came out pretty decent.
I then used a rub of just white pepper, kosher salt, granulated garlic, and granulated onion. I was stupid though, in that I typically mix them together and then spread the rub on the meat. This time since it was so simple I thought I could just get away with putting them on one at a time. Bad idea as when done the seasoning was uneven as I found out later.
While the meat rested in the kitchen I went and fired up my smoker. I have the Char-Grillers Smoking-Pro which I have been using for several years and loved it.
So I took some kindling that I had and used my charcoal chimney to get that lit and then threw on some red oak to get the flames going. This went fairly easy and before I knew it I had a great fire going and the smoker was heating up nicely. My goal was to heat the grill to around 300 and then throw the brisket in along with a large pan of water. With my temperature gauge set high in the smoker, I figured I would guess that the temperature at meat level would be around 275, which is just where I wanted it.
So when it got to temperature I threw the meat on fat cap up, made sure my water container was full and closed the lid for the next 3 hours. After 3 hours I spritzed it with water a couple times an hour until I hit the 5 hour mark at which point I wrapped the brisket in Aluminum Foil. I left it in the smoker figuring I had 5 hours to go, so I settled in to wait.
After 7.5 hours I wanted to check the temperature of the meats just to see how I was doing. So I pulled out my meat thermometer and stuck it in through the foil. The thermometer went in so easily I was sure that I had missed the meat there was zero resistance!!! That was great, what was not so great was that the meat temperature was well past 210 degrees and I supposedly had 3 hours of cooking to go!. So I had no choice and pulled the brisket and took it into to the house where I let it rest.
45 minutes later (too soon) I cut it.
The results:
The bark was inconsistent – due to how I applied the rub
The fat was still loose- probably not enough cook time and cutting it too early.
The meat was really juicy and tender – from the wrap and keeping the water pan in..
So what did I learn?
1) Pre-mix the rub and be sure it is applied evenly
2) Add a temperature gauge at meat level (like recommended) to better control the cooking temperature
3) Don’t let the bark get too dark – it turned into a rock hard coating in some places.
4) Need a bigger fire box – after 5 hours of throwing wood into the fire box on my smoker I was running out of room for new wood and had to shovel out some of the ash to make room.
5) wood should be of a consistent size – Until today I would just burn it the way I got it, but today once piece of wood was more like a 4×6 plank with bark and was tough to burn and almost killed my fire.
6) Use wood that is more seasoned. This stuff burned unevenly.
7) be sure to have lots of cold drinks around Smoking meats is hard work.
Overall this was a blast on I am looking forward to the next attempt. I also plan on adding pictures as I go from now on just because it tells a better story,
Central Coast Senior 
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