Iroquois
08-31-2014, 01:59 PM
Sometimes you just have to improvise.
I felt pretty comfortable with my Brisket book knowledge, but not as comfortable with my Brisket cook knowledge. What I am saying is that I felt I had read enough, watched enough and listened enough to a lot of advice after failing at my first Brisket attempt, that I was ready to go all out. I had a friend pick me up a 13lb packer from a local butcher and when he delivered it, it was Beautiful! I went to town trimming it, seasoning it and prepped the WSM for the long slow cook. I got up at 0400 and pulled the seasoned meat out of the fridge and let her set for a couple of hours. I set up the smoker like I always do for a long smoke (used Hickory and Cherry this time), had the BBQ Guru set and dropped about 20 hot briquettes from the chimney into the pan. Closed her up and waited for it to come up to temp before putting the meat on. Meat goes on at 0600 and I go about my business. My experience to this point having smoked at least 40 butts and as many chickens and ribs as well as fish, was that I did not need to check on it anything too early. Well, I was WRONG!! After about an hour an a half I stepped outside and my temp had gone up to nearly 400 degrees! I immediately took the lid off to let some of the heat escape, checked my Guru to make sure I had not set it wrong, and checked all of the vents to make sure they were closed. The meat had reached an internal temp of 134 at that point. Still scratching my head, I let the pit temp come down and put the lid back on. About 10 minutes later, the temp was climbing back up toward 300. I again removed the lid, losing precious smoke and decided to check the pit. I have never experienced this is my life, but somehow my entire pit of coals was on fire! Panic set in, like when I was a little kid and accidently set the woods on fire. Here is where I improvised...I decided that I would crack the lid open and see if I could maintain the heat for a little while longer but that did not work, so again in panic mode I decided to take it off the pit, put it on a rack in a pan, poured a bottle of stout beer in the bottom,wrapped it and finished it off in the oven set at 225. A method that I have used for many, many years when it comes to finishing in the oven is to wrap my pan in plastic wrap first and then cover with heavy duty aluminum, this ensures zero loss of steam. Once I pulled the meat from the oven, I wrapped in in foil and put it in the cooler for 3 hours. Well, I overshot my internal temp by about 5 degrees, but I will tell you that it still came out bloody good. The beer Au Jus was delicious on the meat. I was amazed at the smoke ring and the amount of smoke that it took on. I attribute that to the fact that it went on at room temperature, I could be wrong. Hindsight, I should have shoveled out most of the coals and started over. Now that I think about it, would it be considered improvising if you do something in a panic? What could have caused the torching of the coals? Could it have been a bad bag?
I felt pretty comfortable with my Brisket book knowledge, but not as comfortable with my Brisket cook knowledge. What I am saying is that I felt I had read enough, watched enough and listened enough to a lot of advice after failing at my first Brisket attempt, that I was ready to go all out. I had a friend pick me up a 13lb packer from a local butcher and when he delivered it, it was Beautiful! I went to town trimming it, seasoning it and prepped the WSM for the long slow cook. I got up at 0400 and pulled the seasoned meat out of the fridge and let her set for a couple of hours. I set up the smoker like I always do for a long smoke (used Hickory and Cherry this time), had the BBQ Guru set and dropped about 20 hot briquettes from the chimney into the pan. Closed her up and waited for it to come up to temp before putting the meat on. Meat goes on at 0600 and I go about my business. My experience to this point having smoked at least 40 butts and as many chickens and ribs as well as fish, was that I did not need to check on it anything too early. Well, I was WRONG!! After about an hour an a half I stepped outside and my temp had gone up to nearly 400 degrees! I immediately took the lid off to let some of the heat escape, checked my Guru to make sure I had not set it wrong, and checked all of the vents to make sure they were closed. The meat had reached an internal temp of 134 at that point. Still scratching my head, I let the pit temp come down and put the lid back on. About 10 minutes later, the temp was climbing back up toward 300. I again removed the lid, losing precious smoke and decided to check the pit. I have never experienced this is my life, but somehow my entire pit of coals was on fire! Panic set in, like when I was a little kid and accidently set the woods on fire. Here is where I improvised...I decided that I would crack the lid open and see if I could maintain the heat for a little while longer but that did not work, so again in panic mode I decided to take it off the pit, put it on a rack in a pan, poured a bottle of stout beer in the bottom,wrapped it and finished it off in the oven set at 225. A method that I have used for many, many years when it comes to finishing in the oven is to wrap my pan in plastic wrap first and then cover with heavy duty aluminum, this ensures zero loss of steam. Once I pulled the meat from the oven, I wrapped in in foil and put it in the cooler for 3 hours. Well, I overshot my internal temp by about 5 degrees, but I will tell you that it still came out bloody good. The beer Au Jus was delicious on the meat. I was amazed at the smoke ring and the amount of smoke that it took on. I attribute that to the fact that it went on at room temperature, I could be wrong. Hindsight, I should have shoveled out most of the coals and started over. Now that I think about it, would it be considered improvising if you do something in a panic? What could have caused the torching of the coals? Could it have been a bad bag?