Brown bag chuck... Faux burnt ends (pron)

Wanted to make some "burnt ends" from a 4.3 lb. chuck roll and test the idea of using a heavy grocery bag instead of foil or butcher paper. 10am... Egg full of Royal Oak and 3 baseball sized chunks of oak buried in the lump. Guru held temp. at 275°. Chuck roll liberally (sorry Tea Party) coated with SM "Peppered Cow." Pizza stone on the "spider" as an indirect piece. Smoked uncovered until 160° internal. Placed on trivet in disposable Weber grill pan. Poured 1/2 " "pertneer bilin' " water (from kettle) in the bottom of the pan (not touching the meat). Slid everything into a large grocery bag and tucked the top underneath. Stuck probes through the paper into the roast. Went in like buttah... frozen buttah! Took a nap. Two hours later the grid temp was holding steady at 275° but the internal temp. had risen only 3° Welcome to the stall. Another hour and half the the internal temp. was finally at 170... Unwrapped the meat and probed. Still tough. Beautiful brown bark, though. Gonna be a LATE supper. Cut the chuck in two... added more hot water to pan and foiled. (Sorry Myron). Bumped temp. up to 325° Getting dark when the smaller of the two pieces finally showed 195°... Impatient, I pulled both pieces and cut into irregular chunks (Never thought little square cubes looked like real burnt ends.) Divided meat into two Webber pans and added 1/2 can beef broth, 1/2 a large chopped onion, garlic powder and more Peppered Cow to each pan. Added mixture of Cowtown, Blues Hog Regular and Blues Hog Tennessee Red to one pan. Returned both to the Egg at 350° an hour later my spousal unit demanded nourishment (She'd nuked a baked potato and doctored some spinach). Pulled the unsauced pan. Amazing. Meat still a bit chewy but the Peppered Cow plus the garlic and onion gave the smoked beef a flavor I hope to duplicate. We ate over half a pan full. Left the sauced pan on another hour. Sampled it for breakfast... Good burnt ends taste... bark reminded me of Bryants burnt ends years ago.

Next time: #1 Use hickory chunks and more of them... Needed more smoke. #2 Skip the bag and foil after 160... bark might soften a bit but it's going to be sauced or covered with broth, anyway. #3 Use a bigger chuck... much bigger... Spending all day on 4# meat is crazy when you could have 12#

Thanks... I'll double bag it next time.

Good ideas. If I use paper again, I'll try to wrap it tighter, and use two layers. Should I try to seal the probe hole(s)? Perhaps I don't quite understand... I thought the purpose of foiling was to hold the hot air/moisture close to the meat so it will cook faster (seems to do that) and that the paper wrap did the same thing... but allowed a little more moisture to escape so that the bark would not be soggy. If there's more to it, I'd like to know. One of the most gratifying things about learning BBQ has been learning cause and effect.

Just thought of something... If I wrap the meat tightly, I won't be able to use the pan, the trivet or the liquid...but, then again, it took forever WITH the pan and liquid... and STILL wasn't tender... OK, next time, two layers of paper... tightly wrapped... no pan or liquid.