Admission of a near failure on brisket, and a question

HI all, I am new to the forums.
I figure it is obligatory to start a thread on a brisket attempt at some point, so I am going to get it out of the way. This will probably be fairly wordy, After my description of what I did I will have a TLDR for anyone who (more than understandable) doesn't want to read another noobie's brisket goof ups. After that I will ask some questions I ran into while I was doing this.
Sadly, to start, I forgot to take any pictures after I stuffed it in at 4am, so no good pics.
This was my first attempt at brisket. I have not been smoking food for very long, and really have only done chicken, turkey, beans, and corn on the cob. I am not usually smart enough to recognize when I am about to try something out of my league, so Friday I decided to try a brisket this weekend. I fired up my internet browser, and started looking around the internet. That is how I found this place, after I already had some idea of how I was going to go about this adventure. Smoke brisket, remove point for burnt ends, make some smoked beans. The beans are much better with pork drippings.... so make some fatties!! I decide a regular fatty and a stuffed one, (never made fatties either.) Girlfriend likes stuffed jalapenos, I saw a recipe for ABTs. thought why not!?!? (So for anyone keeping track, here is the list of things I am making that I have never done before; brisket, burnt ends, ABTs, fatties. Does this seem like a bad idea to anyone else?)
Saturday morning I trimmed the fat off a whole packer leaving about 1/2 in fat cap on one side. This left me with about a 9.25 lb brisket. I added a rub to it, wrapped in plastic wrap and put it in the refrigerator. Yay refrigerator!
Sunday morning I got up nice and early, almost 4am (about 45 min after I meant to) fired up my gas smoker, got it up to about 250, put some hickory chips in, added the brisket, and put a thermometer into the flat. I stayed awake for an hour to make sure the temp was stable, then took a nap. Everything went exactly according to plan for a few hours.

When the stall came around I pulled the brisket and wrapped in foil, added a little beef broth, and wrapped it a few more layers of foil to make sure it didn't leak. Then I realized my first mistake. I forgot to put the probe back in so I could see when it came out of the stall. So I carefully opened the end back up to try and get the probe in without spilling everywhere. Got the probe in, closed it back up, and put it back on the smoker. Yay, so far.

A few hours later (sooner than I expected) I saw the temperature climbing again. After much reading, specifically on this forum, I knew that after the stall the temperature didn't really mean anything anymore, it was now up ti the brisket to decide when it was done, not my thermometer.

So I let the temp rise to about 185, and decided to poke it, just to see how it was doing. I opened the door to the smoker, and realized that there was a part of the process I hadn't planned for. And this will make the subject of the end question for this post. The brisket is wrapped in foil, with a lot of very tasty juice floating around. How do I poke the brisket without spilling everything everywhere.....

So, I pulled the whole thing out, opened the foil, and dumped the tasty tasty juice into a bowl. This is when I realized I had made another mistake. I had put the probe in the point instead of the flat.... :doh: OOPS! I checked the temp of the flat, it was still only about 168. That explains how fast it came out of the stall. Dag Nabbit!! I just threw the whole thing back in the smoker, hoping it wasn't too far from coming out of the stall. 2-1/2 hours later, we are still sitting at the 171. Now I am starting to get close to when I was wanting to put other things in the smoker. People will be showing up for food soon, and I had already pushed everything back about 1-1/2 hours. So I pulled the brisket out, separated the point from the flat, wrapped the flat in foil, and stuffed it in the oven (hangs head in shame)
I chop the point, add a mix of the au jus, a little bbq sauce, and some of the rub I put on the brisket and toss this all back in the smoker for burnt ends.
I throw the ABTs, fatties, and beans in the smoker. Let everything cook for a little over 2 hours. The flat finally came out of the stall, and I started poking it. When the probe started sliding in very easily, I pulled it out, wrapped in towels and put in cooler to rest. It sat in there for almost an hour, before the rest of the food was ready. Yay Food!!!

Overall, everything turned out fairly well. The fatties were great. The ABTs were ok. The burnt ends, while not very burnt, were great. The brisket flat itself was very tender, but a little dry. I think I forgot to rest it after it came to temp before wrapping in towels; so I think I got it a little overdone. Overall, not a terrible first try. Everyone said it was great, better than they have had in a long time. Even better then they have had in a BBQ joint here in years. I was not nearly as impressed with the brisket; I suspect they were heaping extra praise to make me feel good (it worked) Overall I was very satisfied with the day, especially when I look back at how much I tried to take on by myself that I had never done before. And it all turned out decent (brisket and ABTs) to really good (stuffed fatty and burnt ends)

Things I learned:
Make sure you get the temp probe into the flat before wrapping in foil....
Don't take on too many new things because they sound tasty.
Burnt ends may be my favorite part.
hickory smoke smells great, even at 4am..


TLDR;
Tried to make brisket and way too many other new things
Forgot to put thermometer in when wrapping in foil, opened back up and accidentally put it in the point)
Realized this mistake when I unwrapped to start poking after, i thought, it came out of the stall
Separated point (for burnt ends) from flat so flat could cook i over.
Brisket flat turned out ok, Burnt ends were great.

So, This leads me to my question.
For those who wrap in foil and add water/beef broth/something at the beginning of the stall; How do you manage to probe for tenderness? Do you drain the au jus after it comes out of the stall and put the brisket back in the smoker un-wrapped, untill the end? Do you just open the foil to poke, and re-seal? if so, how do you manage not to spill all the liquid out? Do you just poke blindly through the foil ( I doubt anyone does this, but I have been very wrong before) and just left the juices drain out? ---What, Oh Great Gods of Tasty Barbeque, is the ever wise and prudent way to handle this??:hail:

Thanks for reading anyway landarc. Is there an advantage to butcher paper over foil? or is it just a person preference based on ease of wrapping?

1911Ron, thanks for the reply. I am probably not dexterous enough to move the brisket with holes in the foil without spilling everywhere. perhaps with practice. :-D

Toymaster: yeah. I have a bad habit of not knowing my limits. One of these days it is going to get me in trouble; and ordering a lot of pizza.

Jeffr: this is why I need to ask dumb questions. It would never have occurred to me to not remove the probe. I don't know why; leaving it in makes perfect sense.

1buckie said:

"(So for anyone keeping track, here is the list of things I am making that I have never done before; brisket, burnt ends, ABTs, fatties. Does this seem like a bad idea to anyone else?)"

Off the high dive into the deep end.......

"And it all turned out decent (brisket and ABTs) to really good (stuffed fatty and burnt ends)"

Not a painful belly flop...............

"Don't take on too many new things because they sound tasty."

proved false by way of own evidence.............

Click to expand...

You can do all kinds of dumb things and get away with it. I may have pulled it off, but I was exhausted by the time dinner was served. I like cooking to be relaxing.