Birthday brisket done

[Smokey Al Gold]

Well as some of you know from my previous threads I cooked 2 briskets for a birthday party this past Saturday and I got it done! It was a rough cook and I know what you guys mean by each brisket is different. I got them on the kettles at 10 AM planning on a high heat cook at 350ish and pulling them off with plenty of time to slice them, cook some sausage and pack everthing in the ice chest and be at the party by 5:30PM. Well it was my time and of course nothing went as planned and I was 30 mins late! First off when I thought I was cooking at 350 it was actually more like 250 at the grate so my times were off. The therm on my kettle albeit cheap has worked well in the past but watching the internal on the probe therm it was climibing very slow. Since I borrowed the other OTS from a friend I didn't have a therm to use on is so I went by feel and checked the brisket temps with my instant read therm. Anyways to make a long story short I had a quick run to wally world to buy an oven therm to realize my mistakes and bumped the temps up. Got em to 160, foiled and brought them up to 200 each and therm probe slid in with little resistance. So I threw them in the ice chest to rest while I quickly showered. It was 5 already so I threw the sausage on indirect and started slicing with the electric knife and it still took me quite a while to slice 2 briskets. They cut well but I know these weren't my best briskets and I was disappointed but they tasted good. Got everything done luckily most people were late anyway so me being a little late was no big deal. Everyone LOVED the briskets and some said it was the best they've ever had. I was glorified in the end so it was nice to hear some compliments even though I was thinking the whole time how to make the next ones even better. Didn't get any party pics since I was in such a rush I left my camera at the house. This was my best smoke rings hands down though. One brisket was salt, pepper and garlic powder the other was a test brisket and I used Julio's seasoning and it came out really really good. I will be buying a maverick therm with 2 probes now because that won't happen to me again! It was a good learning experience. Thanks for the advice!

Setup



Briskets ready to go!

Coming along

Taking a peek

Foiled. The other one looks the same

Sausage on the SJP

Flat seperated on the salt,pepper garlic one. Wasn't happy with the bark

Loved the smoke rings though

2nd brisket

It did taste good!

[Phubar]

Nice pics!
Smokerings look great!

[Ron_L]

Nice brisket!

It feels good when folks enjoy your food, doesn't it?

[Smokey Al Gold]

Originally Posted by Ron_L

Nice brisket!

It feels good when folks enjoy your food, doesn't it?

It really does. After 8 hrs of running around watching temps and having smoke in your eyes it feels really good.

[jeffjenkins1]

Looks good!

Jeff

[BBQ Grail]

Very nice brisket! Congrats on the great cook!

[Mark Stanton]

Sounds like a busy day. Glad it turned out good. It all looks great!

[BIG ALAN]

Improvise, adapt, overcome......(Clint Eastwood as Gunny Highway in Heartbreak Ridge)

[BBQWildcat]

Way to go on the cook. Food looks good and if people liked it then that is all that matters.. you can think you didn't do a good job but people eat up good Q.. u are your toughest critic.

Tuck

[Peteg]

Nice job. That smoke ring is amazing! Was that just regular Kingsford?

[Smokey Al Gold]

Originally Posted by Peteg

Nice job. That smoke ring is amazing! Was that just regular Kingsford?

It was actually our local supermarket (HEB for you texans) brand mesquite briquettes. On the bag it says "hardwood briquettes" I'm not sure what binders they use but I've always really liked their briquettes good stuff. I figured for low and slow maybe their mesquite charcoal would be good and it was. I really wanted to try the minion with 50/50 briquettes and mesquite lump but maybe next time.