Temperature stall

donkep · Jul 17, 2018

I am cooking my first-ever brisket in a vertical drum cooker. Small brisket, 3.8 lbs. Temp in the drum is 290 deg F. IT of the brisket was coming up nicely until about 152 deg F, then the rate of change slowed waaaay down.

What causes the stall? What should I do about it? If I'm patient, will the temp rise resume?

My plan was to go to 160, then wrap in foil (with sauce perhaps) and take it up to 200. Then pull it out and put it in a cooler for a while.

How am I doing? I love this new hobby... learning with every cook!

Thanks!

Don

Rockinar · Jul 17, 2018

It will hit the stall around 150-160 then SLOWLY creep up. Being you have a really small brisket and using high temp, it should not stay there very long. Keep an eye on it. Wrap in foil @160 if you want. Wrap it tight. Dont put BBQ sauce in the foil.

IFlyEm · Jul 17, 2018

Stall is when the fat is rendering down. It’s like a pan with water in it. It heats up to 212 degrees then the water boils and the temp stabilizes. When the water starts to run out the pan heats up again. Very similar to what’s happening in the meat.

SmittyJonz · Jul 17, 2018

Stall is when it hits IT High enough to start breaking Fat and connective tissue. You can go ahead n wrap to Help speed it along. Different on each piece of meat - 2 Briskets of same size - one may stall longer. I usually go Nekid the whole cook but occasionally wrap in Butcher paper

Big N Hot · Jul 17, 2018

What the other guys said. It's like an evaporative cooling. And it can be a PIA

locosmoke · Jul 17, 2018

I would not put anything with high sugar content in wrap. I wrap all my brisket and i use butter and some worcetershire sauce.

jfusaro · Jul 17, 2018

The meat will sweat and evaporating moisture will keep the meat cool until it becomes dry enough to continue heating up.

donkep · Jul 17, 2018

Ran out of patience so I pulled it at 156, wrapped it in foil, put it back in and the IT zoomed 40 degrees in 30 minutes!

m-fine · Jul 17, 2018

Close. Stall is evaporative cooling, but it is not caused by fat breaking down. As muscle fibers heat up, they contract and push moisture out. This starts below 140, but ramps up around 150-160 and that causes the stall.

You don’t need to know about the stall, or do anything about it. Really the best thing to do is leave the thermometer in a drawer and just let the brisket cook, but companies love to sell gadgets and people love to buy them, so now we can have stall discussions.

W.I.T.W.A.G? · Jul 18, 2018

sounds like you're right on track!

Smoking Piney · Jul 18, 2018

Whenever I cook briskets or butts, I plan in time for the stall. I cook briskets to color first, and then wrap to finish them.

Happy Hapgood · Jul 18, 2018

Here's a graph of an overnight brisket cook I did. The probe was in the thickest part of the flat. One important point. Your cook to probe tender not by temp. At the temp I smoke at 275*F. I "normally" hit the stall at approx. 165*. I do not wrap either. Notice once the brisket hit 195* I used that temp as an indicator to tell me to start probing for doneness. It had to go awhile longer to hit probe tender as shown on the graph.

You can also see the stall temp vs hours. You have a good plan as for the rest of it.
Good Luck!

donkep · Jul 18, 2018

Toast said:
Here's a graph of an overnight brisket cook I did. The probe was in the thickest part of the flat. One important point. Your cook to probe tender not by temp. At the temp I smoke at 275*F. I "normally" hit the stall at approx. 165*. I do not wrap either. Notice once the brisket hit 195* I used that temp as an indicator to tell me to start probing for doneness. It had to go awhile longer to hit probe tender as shown on the graph.

You can also see the stall temp vs hours. You have a good plan as for the rest of it.
Good Luck!

Overnite cook, very cool! I'd probably wake up every hour to check the progress! I'm a data nut so I love the graph. What equipment/ app is that? Thanks very much!

Happy Hapgood · Jul 18, 2018

donkep said:
Overnite cook, very cool! I'd probably wake up every hour to check the progress! I'm a data nut so I love the graph. What equipment/ app is that? Thanks very much!

I do temps for a living since 1980. Were you born then? :razz: I have a Party Q ATC on my 18" WSM. I can set that rig at 275* and when I wake the next morning, it's not at 274 or 276. Good steady burn all night.

For temp monitoring I use the GrillEye. https://www.walmart.com/ip/GrillEye...2025&wl11=online&wl12=461135088&wl13=&veh=sem

Comes with 2 probes if you want to monitor grill temp and meat temp.

Here's my overnight setup.

The GrillEye comes with the free app you see above and alarms and a bunch of other stuff. Now Thermaworks makes the best most accurate stuff but for my needs this has been working just fine.

Nome optional. :thumb:

Temperature stall

donkep

Well-known member

Rockinar

is Blowin Smoke!

IFlyEm

Knows what a fatty is.

SmittyJonz

somebody shut me the fark up.

Big N Hot

Full Fledged Farker

locosmoke

Knows what a fatty is.

jfusaro

Well-known member

donkep

Well-known member

m-fine

is One Chatty Farker

W.I.T.W.A.G?

Full Fledged Farker

Smoking Piney

somebody shut me the fark up.

Happy Hapgood

somebody shut me the fark up.

donkep

Well-known member

Happy Hapgood

somebody shut me the fark up.

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