1st brisket - in trouble?

StellarEvo · March 2014

I've got my first brisket on the Egg and I was convinced things would go smoothly since my wife got me the BBQ Guru for my birthday.

Things seemed fine too...until I noticed the food temp stopped rising at about 110 degrees. I switched over to the pit temp and it was at 220 degrees. No issues, right? My first thought was it hit the stall but it seemed really early based off what I've read. I let it do it's thing for maybe 2.5 hours and with no changes, I figured something had to be up. I pulled out my Maverick probe and threw it in there to see what it was reading at the grill level. Low and behold, it was reading about 118 degrees while the Guru was reading 220 still.

I opened the Egg and changed the location of the guru probe and it changed to about 118...which matched the Maverick reading. It's now worked it's way back to 220 degrees and I'm chugging along.

This is my first brisket and I've heard stories of failure and disappointment. So I ask the pros: will the time the brisket sat idle (more or less) hurt it in the end or will it be okay since I didn't have the pit go up to high temp?

henapple · March 2014

Shouldn't. ..keep us posted

grege345 · March 2014

I think your gonna have to raise the temp some if you want to eat it today

lousubcap · March 2014

@StellarEvo-the idle is no issue-with your pit temp at 220*F you will be in for a long ride as noted above. Most briskets finish (when you can probe the thickest part of the flat with no resistance) somewhere in the 190-low 200's temp range. Don't know how big your hunk of beef is but I can see anywhere from 1 1/4 to 1-1/2 hours /# with the dome at around 260-280*F (Don't do pit temp). And each hunk behaves on it's own. FWIW-

StellarEvo · March 2014

Thanks for quick replies. Seems pretty encouraging. I'm going to raise it up in a few. I'm keeping an eye on it now to make sure nothing else goes poorly.

My wife wanted to go to a new breakfast restaurant and it got me away from the house for the first time since I've owned the egg. When we got home, I got to smell the aroma that the egg puts off and it was amazing! I guess because I'm around that smell for 14 hours usually, I become immune. After smelling that, I really hope it turns out as good as it smells (and finishes by dinner!).

StellarEvo · March 2014

Sorry for taking so long to update. I ended up foiling up to get it done by dinner time. I threw some butter in the foil and you can see the melted butter in the pictures. It turned out really juicy and pretty tender with some good smoke flavor.

Thanks for the help. It encouraged me during the cook!

I took a few pictures: