Well today Jenn and I did our third smoke on our Weber Smokey Mountain Cooker. The first time, we did pork loin back ribs. The second time, we did pork spare ribs, trimmed St. Louis Style. This time we bought a 5.75 pound brisket flat from Costco and gave brisket a try. I wanted the meat ready to eat at 4:00PM, so including meat rest time, getting the smoker going, etc., I decided to start at 4:00AM. I thought this would give me time for the meat to rest, and give me a little extra time in case the brisket didn’t cook as fast as I had planned for.

So the timeline went something like this:

0400: Wake up, pull brisket from fridge and apply rub. Set on counter wrapped with plastic wrap. Back to bed.

0530: Light about 20 coals in chimney starter since I’m using the Minion method.

0545: Put brisket on top grate of WSM. Back to sleep.

0615: Wake up, curious what the smoker temp is at. Checking it, I see it is lower than I expected (around 165). I see that while I opened all the bottom vents, I forgot to open the top vent. I opened the top vent and hoped it would recover. Back to bed.

0730: Wake up, check temp. Looks good now, lid temp was around 235.

0815: Wake up for good, check temp, looks good, still around 235-240ish.

0930: Baste brisket with 1/2 BBQ sauce, 1/2 water.

During the day I would occasionally check the temp to make sure things looked good. The WSM did not dissapoint, holding steady between 225-240. We went to Costco and ran a couple of errands for a few hours.

1200: Baste meat again, meat temp is now at 180, and has been there for a while.

1230: Wrap the meat in foil with meat temp at 181.

1336: Meat has now hit my target temp of 188. Rush to get cooler and stuff to store meat until it’s time to eat.

1345: Meat is in pre-heated cooler, wrapped in foil, and surrounded by a sleeping bag. I then wrapped a toe-down strap around the cooler to keep it shut. The probe is still in the meat to make sure we stay at food safe temperatures (i.e. >140 degrees F).

1400: Put some almonds in the smoker, drizzled with vegetable oil and sprinkled with salt and pepper. Put on a few chunks of apricot to get the smoke going pretty good.

…

And thats where I am now. I’ll pull the almonds around 1500 or 1530 to do the next batch. A great way to use the fuel still burning, the smoked almonds are delicious.

So around 1600 we’ll taste the brisket. Hope it turns out well!

That’s all for now.

Scott