Upcoming Friday smoke!

I am taking this Friday off from work for the express purpose of smoking brisket! It's nice having priorities lined up properly. The following two weeks will be crazy at work, then the week of Christmas the fam is taking a road trip to Colorado, so it was pretty much now or never.

Got a 14# prime packer last weekend at $2.99/#, and it is calling my name. We are getting a super frigid arctic blast here in Houston, with temps in the 40's: brr!!!!!!!!! :becky: Anyway, that makes for some good smokin' weather with a nice cup of hot coffee in hand.

I'll be using my WSM, and running Weber briquettes for the first time. Just picked up some nice Oak chunks at Academy so will mix in a few of those. Rub will be SPOG, with maybe a couple of additions.

A daughter has a choir performance that evening at 7:00, so I want to eat by around 5:30. Sooo...... planning on getting up at 0-dark-thirty and putting the trimmed and seasoned packer into the smoke by about 5:30. I'll be cooking at around 280 (that is where my WSM seems to want to run) so this should allow me to pull it by around 2:00, let it vent then wrap it up and put in the Igloo for a few hours.

Can you tell I am excited??!!

pjtexas1 said:

... Don't get so excited that you forget the pics....

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No chance of that, brother!

BREAKING NEWS: this smoke has been moved to Sunday. Don't want to be rushed. Will put it on about 6:30 (along with fatties for later breakfast), then head out for Sunday School at about 9:15, back around 10:45 to check on things.

bonz50 said:

fixed that for ya :thumb:

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Thanks for having my back, bonz. :thumb:

If I had kept with my original schedule, I would have been prepped the WSM last night and had it sitting out on my driveway ready to go. That means this morning it would have had 2" of snow on the dome: crazy! We get snow about every 8-10 years here in Houston, so today has been a blast so far. Since I had already lined up my PTO, I am calling this my snow day! Ok, we get a little goofy about it down here y'all.

What I will do is get the rest of what I will need. Need to make a new batch of SPOG, get some sausage plus get what I need for ABTs. Also, my brisket carving knife will barely cut butter: either I grab a new cheapo knife today or get a whetstone at Lowe's and sharpen that sucker up. Basically, some legit goofing off.

Speaking of fun: just whipped up a batch of rub for tomorrow's smoke. I am calling this Stout #1 Brisket Rub because, well, it's the first mix I have made beyond a basic SPOG.

3/4 cup coarse black pepper
1/2 cup Kosher sea salt
2 tblspn onion powder
1 1/2 tblspn garlic powder
2 tblspn turbinado sugar
1/2 tblspn cayenne pepper

This batch fit perfectly into a medium sized shake container of parsley flakes that were rather ancient anyway, so off they went.

Oh, and yesterday I picked up a Smith's adjustable angle pull-thru knife sharpener at Lowe's and had fun sharpening up various kitchen knives, including my designated brisket knife. Seems much improved.

Things really reaching a fever-pitch over here, yep.