Brisket point temp dip during stall


 
A

AndrewSolis

New member
Hi All,

I'm smoking a small point (2 1/2 lbs.) for some brisket burnt ends. I did the normal guide of 250F for the smoker. It started climbing pretty fast, but once it got to about 161F the stall happened, but I also noticed that the temperature dropped a bit (down to about 158). Is this normal? I haven't seen any mention of a dip during the stall so wanted to check..

Thanks!
 
Yep, temps can dip when it hits the stall. With a piece that small, it'll probably move up fast once it gets through the stall, so keep an eye on it! Probe for tenderness around 195 (though I find points usually need to go to 200 or more for tenderness and rendering depending on how marbled it was.)

Good luck!

R
 
What Rich said, Same thing can happen with butts if you go for that 225-250 range, not so if you go 275.
I haven't put a temp probe in a butt or brisket in quite awhile, prefer to let the meat tell me when it's done.:wsm:
 
All above is good advice. I’ve noticed too, if the temp probe is in a fat pocket it can give a false reading. I’ve moved the probe in/out a bit and the temp corrected.
 
It's completely normal for the temp to drop some. It will recover. It used to always freak me out. You are right. You don't see it mentioned a lot. We just have very good thermometers these days. The stall is evaporative cooling going on. Meat juices driven to the surface during the cooking process cool the meat down, slowing cooking and sometimes even causing the internal temp to drop slightly. Cooking hotter seems to reduce the duration of the stall quite a bit. 250 isn't that bad. A stall on a 225 cook can takes 5 or 6 hours. It's brutal. I like cooking at 250. 275 works pretty well too. I'm not a big fan of hot and fast. It works well for some people.
 
MartinB said:
The stall occurs above 150F.
Cooked muscle fibers begin contracting.....the meat shrinks.....and squeezes water/juices out. The evaporation of more moisture tempers the temperature rise.
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Precisely ...
That's about the Denature of it ... ;)
 
I just think of it as the meat sweating so it cools off — just like we do. Once there’s no more moisture to sweat out to cool it off, the temp rises again.
 
First when cooking fatty meats there is no stall, a stall indicates the process has stopped, it doesn't. When you say a stall is occurring, the process is continuing, a phase change is happening. That is how the fat is removed from the meat. during the phase change of solid to a liquid, all of the energy is used in the phase change. Since we now have a liquids, the area around the liquid is cooled by the liquid since all the heat energy is used in the phase change, temp drops. That is also why once the phase change occurs, the temp increases rapidly until a mass of fat is reached deeper in the meat, the phase change occurs again and that process continues and the process keeps a going. This just follows the principles of Physics.
 
Dan Lutter said:
First when cooking fatty meats there is no stall,
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Beg to differ. The stall is a recognized phenomenon in BBQ nomenclature. Someone in BBQ antiquity decided to name the phase change as "the stall" and it stuck. In BBQ lingo fatty meats enter "the stall" somewhere around 160 IT and what folks observe is a stop to the rise in internal temp. Hence the term.
 
Dustin Dorsey said:
The stall is evaporative cooling going on. Meat juices driven to the surface during the cooking process cool the meat down ...
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Using water in the pan slows down the evaporative cooling process by raising the humidity in the cooker. Think of how much hotter you feel on a hot, humid day than on a hot, low humidity day.

Jeff
 
Lew Newby said:
In BBQ lingo fatty meats enter "the stall" somewhere around 160 IT and what folks observe is a stop to the rise in internal temp. Hence the term.
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Or at least a marked reduction in temperature rise.

The flow of liquid out ......cool liquid from deeper inside the meat being squeezed to surface, also is counter flow to conduction in. Slowing heat conduction into the meat......even putting increased evaporation aside. Heat energy is literally dripping off the meat.

I've seen less than 1/2 degree/hr cooking at 225F......huge decrease from the 10-30 F/hr you approach it with. Yup.....it just stops. But at higher temps like 275, it just slows to a few degrees/hr and is much shorter. 225 on a pork butt is something I'll never try again......
 
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Thanks everyone. There's a lot of good info here. I'm doing a brisket this Sunday and I'll try to stay at 250 degrees or just above.
 
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