you keep mentioning that you've "over" cooked them the last few times... I think the problem here is that you are actually under cooking them... if the collagen does not get a chance to break down then you will have tougher dryer meat that will give the appearance that it is over cooked... believe me when i say that it took a while to understand this and make myself leave a brisket on for much longer than it seems it should have been on there... I waited and waited for that "budda feel" that i kept hearing about... once i found it, i understood what they were talking about... here is what i do:
i monitor temps until i see the "stall zone"... once i see it break, then i check for feel because at this point temp is not important (the meat is essentially cooked thru). if the probe sliding in the flat does not feel almost the same as sliding in the point, i leave it for another hour and then check again. rinse, lather, repeat, until the "budda feel" has arrived. i know it feels like a hard thing to just let it sit there, but once the feel is there, it will be there for quite a while... so it's not likely that you will over cook it if checking it once an hour...
i start checking after the "stall zone break" because i've had a few that were done right away, and a few that have taken almost another 3 hrs to break down the collagen...
good luck to you... brisket is a funny thing... :roll: