Sauce your brisket for competitions?
 

I was curious as to how many of you guys brushed your brisket with sauce before slicing at competitions (or dipped burnt ends in?) Or do you only use the au jus?

We use our sauce for burnt ends and au jus for slices.

I sauce the backside of each slice just before putting them in the box.
If they look dry, I brush the front side with a thinned down sauce.

I sauced the last couple comps. Appearance scores went up but taste scores went down. Now I'm here trying to figure out what to do next.

I'm doing a practice run tomorrow. Think I'll save the burnt ends and just hit the slices with au jus.

I'm doing a practice run tomorrow also. I'm going to go light on the sauce on the burnt ends plus the au jus, not sure about the slices yet.

I hit the slices with au jus and dip the ends in a mix of sauce and au jus.

I treat it like a steak. If I need A-1 it must not be to good.

LOL once in a while that sucker AINT no good!

As a judge, moist looking meat is a key to me. Unfortunately, even properly cooked brisket can look dry so I recommend at least spritzing the meat with water/beef broth/au jus before you close the lid. If I were putting the box together, I would dunk each slice in the jus from the foil and then present it in the box. For burn ends, I like them lightly sauced with a thinned sauce. For me with all meats, I prefer to see a light application of sauce that just has a mild flavor to compliment the meat. I don't want to taste too much from the sauce.