Brisket Rant

Father Flanagan said:

I was using a smoke thermoworks so I think the reading was correct but I’m not sure if that was the correct temp where the brisky was. I was using this extension ring on the kettle so I’m wondering if the heat was almost skipping over the meat.

Or I might just be completely insane lol

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I am just across the state line if you ever need a hand with something.

I would suggest you stop peeking at your meat! It sounds like you fiddled with it a lot. Keep the cooker closed as much as possible, plan your method of fueling the cook with that in mind. In a 26" kettle, you should be able to bank enough fuel on one side to do an indirect brisket cook and never have to add fuel at all. You can easily run at 275-325F like this and power though that cook in ~8 hours ish. Think of your cooking environment as a very low pressure cooker. Every time you take off the lid, you lose temperature and the pressure inside the cooker, this typically adds 15+ minutes to cook time every time you open 'er up. This is why I always tell people they spritz too much, and if they just left the meat alone closed up, their meat is going to be fine. Although I agree that just at the end of the cook, a couple of very fast spritzes is probably beneficial to keep the bark soft if cooking full naked (unwrapped the whole way).

Father Flanagan said:

I definitely over thought this cook. I got caught up in the whole Jeremy Yoder brisket tallow method. I was waiting for the fat cap to sink in whenever I poked at it and it never did.

I’ve tried hot and fast and didn’t get good results, I don’t think it’s the method though, I would just need to get use to it. So expensive, especially right now, to just do “practice briskets”.

I do have a pbc and I’ve cooked a brisket on there before that came out pretty good, much better then this last one. I was trying to limit the amount of charcoal taste on the brisket which is why I went with the kettle. I am starting to think that perhaps I should just smoke with the pbc and use the kettle for grilling. That flipping’ extension ring was pricey though.

I have franklins book and haven’t completely read the whole thing after my wife and I had our second child. Ill have to look at the kiss method as well as bigabytes.

Thanks for the advice guys!

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I have to agree. The Weber Kettle is a great grill. But it would not be my first choice for smoking briskets. Either my 22.5 WSM or my RecTec RT 590 gets that chore. Weber Kettle gets the Vortex and wing duty.

I've cooked dozens of briskets and butts in my 22.5" kettle. It does a perfectly fine job, and is a lot more fuel efficient than my 22.5" WSM. The key in my mind is how you set up the fuel, and let the cooker do its job, don't open it up much to peek. I use a couple of paver bricks to stack all my unlit fuel on one side of the charcoal grate, then toss 10 or 12 lit briqs on top to get everything going. That will go for almost 8 hours without the need to add more fuel.

During my short stint at cooking BBQ professionally, we routinely cooked 4-6 briskets, overnight in a commercial smoker. Cows are unique like people. It was not unusual for one of 5 or 6 briskets to go directly to chili, along with the leftovers from the previous day. You might have just had a "bad" brisket.



IMO, the most critical aspect of the cook is the amount of time the internal temp is between 170 and 200. I've never cooked on a kettle grill using indirect method, though friends of mine do it regularly. For reference, in our commercial smoker we always had at least 4" - 5" between the various pieces of meat for the purpose of airflow consistency and we cooked at 195 degrees followed by holding at 145.



You have a nice piece of equipment. Keep a journal with lots of notes about each cook. One can achieve great results using a $100 smoker, if one knows how to maximize the performance of what they have.


Smoking a brisket is a little like the practice of medicine. It requires practice and is more art than science. Don't beat yourself up over unintended results. At home, I always cook a variety of meats with some turning out better than others.