Does this brisket look/seem OK to you?

It’s been in my garage mini fridge for ~12 days since I received it (packed with dry ice and very frozen). That fridge runs pretty cold (you can see some light ice crystals on the inside of the bag) and I’ve been waiting for a) the meat to thaw and b) proper weather, which has finally come. It gleaked a little red juice from a pinhole in the bag, smells normal.

I’m thinking about trimming/salting & peppering tonight, and putting 275* smoke to it by 6AM tomorrow in my stick burner, then moving it to my “outdoor oven” (AKA electric smoker sans wood chunks) when it’s time to wrap. I might not even wrap, given that the air stays fairly moist in there, with very little airflow.

I’m also considering cutting it in half before or after applying smoke, then vacuum sealing the pieces and dropping them into a sous vide water bath for a day or two. Flamethrower afterwards to freshen up the bark.

The bag and lighting is giving it a bit of icky look that isn’t there in person. There’s a pork chop in that same refrigerator that’s been thawing for 5 days and is still partially frozen, so I think it’ll be fine. Like you said, passing the smell test is key.

My work schedule is going to force my hand; I now have Google Hangouts meetings scheduled for tomorrow morning, so I’ll apply smoke in the afternoon, then bag it and get it into the water bath. Worked great for my last butt, we’ll see how it does on brisket.

I took it out of the cryovac and trimmed & got it into a couple of gallon-sized vac bags. It smelled pretty damn good (like fresh beef) the whole time, so I’m no longer concerned about freshness.

I got it going in my 2 Sous Vide Supreme units for the next 36-40 hours at 155*. I’ll transfer them to the fridge Wednesday AM, then put some smoke and bark on them (reverse smoke?) in my stick burner for 4 hours or so Wednesday afternoon.

That’s good to know - this one (and its twin in my deep freeze) came packed well and frozen HARD, can’t complain. I am pretty sure I caused the hole in the cryovac wrestling with all the stuff in the freezer before I pulled it out.

It didn’t look bad once it was unwrapped (other than a little oxidization from being unsealed in the fridge) and it smelled perfectly fine. Looking forward to finishing and eating it tomorrow (or any time in the next week, given that it’s fully cooked in the sous vide bath).

Here’s a pre-trim pic. You’ll all shed tears if I show post trim/in bag pics (yeah I cut it in half, point still attached, as I needed to get it bagged).