brisket - never came out of plateau

certified_prime

So I did a 5.5lb brisket flat yesterday. It was a great piece of meat - Choice grade with a nice 1/4" inch of fat cap still on the bottom.

I set the Large BGE up for 250 degrees dome temp, plate setter in and an aluminum drip pan on top of it below the cooking grid, stuck my remote meat thermometer into the brisket, and started it at 7am.

The brisket reached the plateau temp, 160 degrees around 10am (3 hours in). It never left that plateau, and in fact fell to 150 degrees by the time I pulled it off at 7pm for dinner. (I even boosted the dome temp to 275 degrees for the final 3 hours).

So, a 5.5lb brisket went for 12 hours total and never got out of the plateau, and spent 9 hours there.

Is that normal? Am I doing something wrong?

vidalia1

I wrap mine in HDAF when it reaches 160. It then takes less than 2 hours to hit 190-200.

Weekend Warrior

Have you checked/calibrated the accuracy of your remote thermometer and your dome thermo too? My guess is that your remote thermo is reading way low or is just completely malfunctioning. What you describe, just isn't possible. I'm not disputing what you observed, just that it doesn't work like that. How was the brisket? It should have been similar to shoe leather after a cook like that.

Mark

certified_prime

I haven't calibrated my dome thermometer...I'll try that tonight / tomorrow.

However, I bbq big racks of spareribs all the time at a dome temp between 225 and 250, and they come out great after 5-6 hours...nice and juicy and tender and cooked fully.

So, I don't think the dome temp is too far off...

certified_prime

as for the brisket, it was quite tasty, really, just still kinda tough. It was still juicy...it just never got up high enough in internal temp to tenderize it.

Quite odd. This has now happened to me on both of my attempted brisket cooks (the first was 2 3lb flats trimmed fully...they cooked for ~7 hours and never got out of the plateau, but I cooked them at a dome temp of 225 so I tried a higher temp for this cook).

fishlessman

you really should check the gages, brisket is not as forgiving as pork. why the little briskets, i never would cook one less than 7 pounds because the time rules dont apply the same with them, they always need more time than you would think. the drip pan was dry?

Weekend Warrior

Check both of your thermos. I'll bet my bottom dollar that at least one of them is on the fritz.

For comparison's sake, I did a 5 lb. flat yesterday as well. It went 5.5 hours total. 225 for the first 3 hours and 250 for the last 2.5 to hit 195 internal. I could have let it go a bit longer, but we were hungry, so I pulled it.

Are you using a drip pan full of liquid underneath? That's about the only other thing that could throw your cooking times way out of whack.

Grandpas Grub

 
In addition to the advice above...

Time is a real tough way to cook. Some cuts of meat just take longer. It is a good idea to cook to temperature and feel. Using the fork method or a probe the brisket should have and easy entry and a very easy pull out of the probe. No pulling against the probe when removing, that is when the cut is done cooking.

The temperatue drop of 10° is a little on the high side but not unusual. I seem to always have a temperature drop with brisket and butt when in the plateau.

Here is a graph of one of my brisket cooks. This was a whole packer. One probe in each end of the cut.

You can see this cut entered the plateau rather quickly and stayed in the plateau for 9 some odd hours. One can see the temperature drop in the meat during the plateau. As I recall it was about 7°.









The cut flat doesn't look all that moist, however, when it was put in the mouth there was a nice amount of moisture and tender. I get about the same results when I cook flats too.

GG

Crimsongator

Whew, that thing looks like it is hooked up to an EKG. It also appears to be falling apart.

smoky b

I was thinking the same thing Gene! Clear!

Grandpas Grub

 
Now that's funny!!! Besides monitoring that brisket I had the DigiQII hooked to the medium cooking a couple of Boston Butts. The stoker was also monitoring the Butt cooks too.

Kent

Grandpas Grub

 
Here is the other meat that was being monitored at the same time.

Kent

certified_prime

no, the drip pan was just a disposable aluminum server. dry. no liquid.

And I tested my thermometer. The BGE dome thermometer was 10 degrees off. Too low. (It measured 200 in boiling water). Which means that the dome temp was actually 10 degrees higher than I believed. Bizarre.

Next time I smoke something, I'll put the remote meat thermometer in there alone, at the grid temperature, to see what it shows.

Grandpas Grub

 
Don't get too hung up on temperatures. 10° isn't all that much off especially on the high end.

I have cooked an 8# Boston Butt at 400° dome and it got done in 6.5 hours. The majority of people eating it would never be able to tell the difference in that cook and a low and slow cook.

These are both a hot and fast cook.




I wonder if your brisket just need more cooking time.

Kent

RandallB

I am newby on the Brisket, but I just did a awesome one yesterday. I did run it at ~275 moreso that 250 most of the day.

I let it go uncovered to 165 degrees and then wrapped in two layers of tinfoil. At 200 degrees I started checking it with a fork. It did have to stay at 200 maybe an hour or two. It was not tender the first time I checked at ~198. Later, I could twist a fork easily in the middle. I set it inside in the foil and cut for dinner about an hour later.