First Brisket on the New Smoker

So, earlier this year, the best wife ever agreed to let me go out and get myself a smoker. I ended up deciding on the Weber Smokey Mountain Cooker, 22.5″. I probably would have been fine with the smaller 18.5″ one, but figured since I wanted to try my hand at brisket, I’d go for the bigger one.

So, last weekend, I gave it a go for a brisket. This first brisket run wasn’t a full brisket. I just picked up a hunk of flat from the store. It was 2.68 lb at the start. I put it on at 10:30, hoping for a 15-16:00 sit down time. Since it was small, and I was planning on going slightly hotter that usual, at 275F, I figured I was in pretty good shape time-wise.

I loaded up the cooker with some good old Kingsford Blue, and dropped in 4 chunks of pecan. To that, I added about half a chimney of lit coals and assembled the cooker. I ran the cooker with the water pan installed, foiled, but empty. I had a bit of temp control difficulty, but I attribute that to me being new to using the WSM. In the end, it wasn’t a big deal.

I wrapped when the meat hit 155F, and was able to push through the stall without difficulty. I’d expect more difficulty with a full packer brisket stalling out. At 14:15, I’d hit 203F, so I pulled the brisket, and wrapped it in a new layer of foil and a beach towel for an hour’s rest on the counter. Then, we came, we sliced, we ate. And it was good. I even took advantage of my time waiting for it to cook and made a snazzy Excel template for tracking smokes like this.