Alrighty
Have a few minutes to write. It was an awesome experience and a ton of lessons learned.
My swiss beef brisket was an 'almost but not quite' cut. Some stuff got lost in translation. I did not know what to expect. It could cook fast, it could cook slow. I chose to cook overnight at 225. This gave me an extra 12 hours or so to adjust to whatever the brisket would throw at me, and should not overcook it by 6 o'clock in the morning.
First overnight cook, first time water in the waterpan. First time cooking with a full charcoal ring.
Since I was aiming for 225 for the overnight period, I lid up 10-14 briketts. Only 5 were actually ashed over. Used the minion method, assbled the WSM, and filled the water pan. 1l boiling, and another 7l tap water. Damn, it holds a lot.
Here was my first lesson learned: Heating up that much mass to 200F, with all vents open, lead to a bunch more charcoals burning than you'd need. Over the next two hours the temps kept rising steadily to 250+.
It was almost 22:30h when I understood the problem. Almost 23:30 when I had the WSM stable at 230-ish. I had the fire clamped down to get low. There was no way it could keep that temp the whole night.
Lesson 2: I don't need the perfect temperature. All I needed was it to not overcook before I wake up. So I left it.
I wanted to sleep till 6, but woke up at 5. The WSM slowly fell to ~190. Brisket was in the stall. It did exactly what I needed it to do.
From that point on I finally relaxed. 'Chill more' would be lesson three.
But my brisket still had a curveball left. Point was tender. Flat was tender, but had a layer of connective tissue through it. I cooked it for an extra hour, but it did not get any more tender.
I pulled it at 205-206
You see part of the "extra" layer on top of the flat immediately fell off. I suspected it was not part of the traditional brisket cut, and you see here.
But it tasted great.
I held it for about 6 hours at 140 in butcher paper
Flat was dry. But damn brisket is awesome. I gave everybody who asked a piece to try. And everybody was amazed (they too never had brisket before).
I loved it. Neighbors loved it. I may get asked to fill my WSM with Briskets for the whole neighborhood.
