Fire went out overnight. What next?

SASPAC · October 10

I have large BGE and finally built up the courage to try an overnight brisket cook.

Short version is that fire went out overnight and meat and grill temps dropped to 180. I recharged the the lump and got back up to temp but have questions on how this may affect final product. During reload of lump and getting temp dialed back in internal temp of brisket fell to 160.

How are these fluctuations in cook temp likely to affect the moisture, tenderness and overall quality of the cook?

Would you recommend a different approach to this particular situation to salvage this brisket?

Would it have been better to pull the brisket and finish in the oven?

in retrospect, I realize now that filling lump charcoal all the way to the plate setter would have prevented this….lesson learned.

Details if you need them:

17 pound (before trimming) choice brisket from samsclub.

Manually controlling vents with remote meat and grate probes. I fell asleep around 4am after reaching 165 and wrapping in butcher paper. I apparently slept through the low grill temp warning from my remote probes.

I woke up to grill temp of 180 and meat temp of 180. On investigating the cause I found that lump charcoal was gone. This was roughly 13 hours into the cook

Looking on app it appeared that the grill temp fell below 200 around 2 hours prior to waking. Then was at around 180 for about an hour.

So I decided to pull brisket and conveggtor off and refill with fresh lump reignited and dialed cook temp back between 225-250.

Meat temp fell to 160 during the recharge but now back in smoker and moving in the right direction.

I see an egg genius in my future😬

thanks for reading my rambling post and for any advice!

fishlessman · October 10

if it dropped below 140f dome temp for 4 hours you can still do what you did. pretty much the cook time changes is all that changes. those are fda safety rules with 4 hours, and with 8 hours sleep its pretty hard to go over 4 hours under 140

SASPAC · October 10

Thanks!! Will press on!

lousubcap · October 11

You are home free with the your cook. You never got into the "food safe" zone of under 140*F. Restore your confidence in the full up manual approach as your above reads like it was a lump load issue not one of chasing the dome temperature.
Skilled in the manual cook will serve you well should you go with a controller and it fails mid cook. FWIW-

Ike · October 11

Remember these numbers: 4-40-140, 4hrs, temp between 40 and 140 is the general rule for food safety.

Canugghead · October 14

bump

Fire went out overnight. What next?

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