High Heat Brisket Temp

It's all preference. I shoot for 300-325ish and I foil at 170 internal. i like the outcome and so do the area judges.

I will put it this way.... the odds of you being satisfied with HH begin to taper down after 300 DEPENDING ON YOUR GEAR!!!!!!!!!

I would suggest anyone who has been cooking under 245 to try it in increments instead of tackling 350. Here is why. Once again some people luck out and get a good one at 350-375. But that has a lot to do with gear.

If you are used to pretty much used to ignoring the brisket for 12 hours or more... then cooking it a fussing and probing it in hours 13 - 18... then you will have to make a BIG attitude adjustment for HH. Your brisket, the higher temp you intend to tackle, will be deliriously done quicker and into the over cook land before you know whats going on. So I suggest STARTING at 270-300 FIRST.

Master that... then try 350.

Also, the higher you cook... the more you have to forget about the whole foiling thing. Forget it.

Lastly, ribs that work beautifully with lower temp cooks and foil have to be abandoned and new ones created.

I would conquer each new deviation on brisket with going back to basic large grained salt pepper and maybe ONE or TWO of your favorite flavor profiles. Once you master the texture and tenderness you can tweak the flavor profile.

good move.. Donnie's advice above makes a lot of sense.

300-325 here...

Has anyone here successfully done this on a WSM?

Grinder10 said:

Has anyone here successfully done this on a WSM?

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http://www.bbq-brethren.com/forum/showthread.php?t=87343

http://www.bbq-brethren.com/forum/showthread.php?t=66185

http://www.bbq-brethren.com/forum/showthread.php?t=76282

Grinder10 said:

Has anyone here successfully done this on a WSM?

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Every competition...

This may help... http://www.bbq-brethren.com/forum/showthread.php?t=77065

JD McGee said:

Every competition...

This may help... http://www.bbq-brethren.com/forum/showthread.php?t=77065

Click to expand...

Thanks!, I forgot about that post and have included it in my "high heat brisket" folder

JD McGee said:

300-325 here...

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Hi JD, Do you use any other high heat method besides the one you posted from the virtual weber site. I hate to say this and you know me. There are to many ingrediants in the recipe.

I will lose my train of thought before I get halfway through.:becky:

Saiko, I gotta try Popdaddy also.

Here's my take, I do what I refer to as a hybrid method.

I start out in the 250-275 range, trying to stay closer to the 250. I believe this gives me a nice smokering still. Once I hit between 160 and 170 internal, or until I am happy with the color, I foil with some liquid. At this point I open it up and turn up the heat. I shoot for 325 to 350. My cooker can make this jump fairly easy.

I figure that once its in the foil low and slow doesn't really matter any more. Also, it seems to rocket through the plateau stage. I take the brisket to around 195 internal. This is an average, I still use the probe to check for overall tenderness. Once I am satisfied with the the interanal temp and tenderness, its back out of the foil and back onto the cooker at the higher temp. This seems to firm the bark back up and give it a little more color.

I will say here that when you take it out of the foil, it will usually drop back down in internal temp. So it may be awhile yet out of the foil for it to finish. I try to finish between 195 and 200, using the probe to check for tender.

I honestly believe that when doing the high temp brisket, foil is a must. But thats JMHO.

I have been doing it this way for a long time now, and have not only had fantastic results, but much more consitent results.

Been cooking HH Briskets since last year based off the same information on the Weber Virtual Bullet site, but using my UDS. Here's my take,

325-350 until it hits 160-165 (usually about 2.5 hours)
FOIL
350-400 until the probe slides in like a hot knife through warm butter (usually about 1.5 - 1.6 hours)
PULL, put in cooler wrapped in towels.

As kevin krueger from WVB states, forget about finishing temp, it's done when it's done. Haven't had one go beyond 4 hours 15 Minutes total cook time yet.

Now, that's the way I do things on a UDS, i've YET to even come close to replicating Popdaddy's results using his HH method. One day maybe, but not yet.

I'm not gonna argue with DonnieT or my cookin' pardner JD, but, if you can get your bullet up to 350*, try this method I call "brain dead brisket".

I fire up my WSM with a torch and open the all the vents 100%, prop the door open and let it rip, toss a few wood chunks on and put the meat on. Let it get a heavy smoke for @ 2 hours and then foil for an hour and check the temps or go by feel after the 3 hour mark, and check every half hour. We have had Kobe flats pop in 3.5 hours



Whole packers @4.5 hours!

Brain dead LOL Love that.

I will add some things I see here. For one, I completely think some time setting the smoke ring is a great idea. Now obviously when I put on like 50 briskets, the mass of that meat ensures I almost can do nothing to screw up the smoke ring... i don't care if the pit is 300... the mass will keep it down around the zone where the briskets are.

So this means if your doing like just one then starting at lower temps is a great idea. However, you do not really need to wait until the stall. One thing I have learned is, and I have said this repeatedly, it matters little how you START off your brisket and more how you FINISH it off. Lets draw a line at the stall. Obviously at HH temps, the brisket still has a stall but whizzes by it much faster. In addition, LOL I think its better because the PSYCHOLOGICAL effect of the stall fark with the novices brain a bit as he/she tends to check and poke the meat repeatedly fretting about the IT -- which often tends to lower the moisture and heat of the house temp from opening and closing the pit. Now how can I draw a a parallel everyone can understand.

Okay, I got one, imagine once again your hot 17 year 3rd cousin at the family reunion. Now she has some of those boobies that are perky and kinda point upward and you just can't keep your hands off of them.. all the time you are staring at them and touching them and at first she likes it... while you are banging her by the tree on the lake you are either are looking to see your wife or kids don't catch you or looking at her boobs. So what happens... she begins to feel "like you are not connecting with her and I feel like a damn piece of meat" and she tells you you don't treat her like you did when she was younger and drops you like a bad habit. Well briskets are like that. That can turn bad on ya and dry up if you obsess with them too much and there is no amount of astroglide that will moisten up their nooks and crannies.

Okay... anyway. Once you are after the hump... we are back to the brisket again... you can ease off if you want... also take consideration of this... those of us who blast the house temp all the way through the cook often also have a holding pattern afterward that continues to work on the meat. To illustrate this when I do my "Big Chop" event I cook maybe 50 packers and pull them when they are basically pretty tender for the most part. I wrap them cool enough so the plastic wrap will not melt and pop them in my huge holder at about 160-170. Now I have served a brisket to a crew when I pull them and the fat layer is still there in between the flat and the point. about 6-7 hours later (i pull them round midnight, pop them in the holder and start the sale the next morning) that area is nearly devoid of all its fat and jelly and water is left in its place. A lot of work happens after you pull it. I have seen the same thing go on in a chest as it holds but be careful in a chest especially throwing it in without cooling or throwing more hot ones on top as you can overcook it. Of course... for a crowd of hungry eaters... you will have more fans of brisket that is slightly over tender than if you did the same at a competition. That's due to people not giving two flips about their brisket holding together if its cut pencil width etc.

Brian in So Cal said:

Hi JD, Do you use any other high heat method besides the one you posted from the virtual weber site. I hate to say this and you know me. There are to many ingredients in the recipe.

I will lose my train of thought before I get halfway through.:becky:

Saiko, I gotta try Popdaddy also.

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swamprb said:

I'm not gonna argue with DonnieT or my cookin' pardner JD, but, if you can get your bullet up to 350*, try this method I call "brain dead brisket".

I fire up my WSM with a torch and open the all the vents 100%, prop the door open and let it rip, toss a few wood chunks on and put the meat on. Let it get a heavy smoke for @ 2 hours and then foil for an hour and check the temps or go by feel after the 3 hour mark, and check every half hour. We have had Kobe flats pop in 3.5 hours

Whole packers @4.5 hours!

Click to expand...

swamper's "brain dead brisket" technique is dead on...:thumb: I have tweaked my method a bit (like Saiko) to suit my liking over the past few months...I no longer depend on a temp probe to tell me when it's ready to foil...I go by color and feel ( I do use my thermapen probe here to tell me both temp and feel)...after foiling I let her go for another hour before stickin' it again...when the probe slides in the flat (against the grain) with little to no resistance...it's time to cooler (rest) before slicing.

My dome temps usually settle in between 325-350...300-325 at the grate...fyi...

Here's a Kobe packer that we did last week for our meat man...it popped in about 4 hours before coolering...I think this is the same brisky swamp...







Note to self...hot brisket melts vinyl gloves...swamp had to come to the rescue...

I will offer one caveat to the statement about preference. Its about the gear. I have been doing more cooks on my little webber and I cannot do what I do on the Brazos (something like 6K pound smoker) or my Meat Mama 3000 (1000 lbs smoker) or my UDS that I do on my weber. So... sometimes in order to get the same result... we have to modify the process.

I think because of the effect that my diverter plate has on the brisket (the brazos os a reverse pit) I cannot do 350. I had to back down. I can on the meat mama on the rotesserie side but on the right side where the shelves are, at 350 I tend to burn briskets and have to turn them a lot which means I am opening too much.. so - I have to reduce the temp. On a UDS there is no problem but I have to at some point either pan it or lay foil DOWN not around. On my weber... I really have to foil a bit due to the close proximity of the coals

So we probably all get great tasting brisket that tender and juicy BUT due to our gear we have to make some mods.

thillin said:

It's all preference. I shoot for 300-325ish and I foil at 170 internal. i like the outcome and so do the area judges.

Click to expand...

Funk-
Why/when do you pan or lay foil down on your UDS cook?

Will the high heat method work for a flat or is better with a packer?

JD McGee said:

Every competition...

This may help... http://www.bbq-brethren.com/forum/showthread.php?t=77065

Click to expand...

JD, thanks for posting this link! I have an offset stick burner, but should be able to adapt........never done a high heat brisket before. Probably would do more cooks if I didn't have to be up at midnight to start things off.

Did you use the paste method that was explained after foiling?

Thanks,