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Guest
Guest
The day started off nice enough, 38 degrees slight wind. I pulled the WSM around the corner out of the wind, Lit 20 coals and dumped the fully lit coals onto a full ring of charcoal. I added 2 chuncks of cherry and three of oak, put 1 gallon of hot water into the brinkman waterpan and assembled the cooker. Now the fun began, as I waited for the temp to raise to 250 on my analog lid therm, I notice something that seemed strange. It was taking an unusual amount of time to come up to temp. Them I saw the temp reading go down instead of up. I placed a NU-TEMP probe thru the lid and found it reading 300. Ok now time to check the analog for calibration. Pulled the analog and tested in boiling water....not even close. It was reading 175. Ok I now know what is going on. I put on the brisket and add a second NU-TEMP probe for the meat. As a side note here both my NU-TEMPS read about 10% high for the boiling test so I have to do the math to figure out what the temps really are. 10 am, the meat is on, it weighs in just over 4 lb. The WSM is steady @250 with minor adjustments. I am planning to be finished in 6 hours (1-1.5 hrs per lb x 4 lb = 6 hr). We have a dinner party at 6pm and I am bringing the main course. Well 4pm comes around, 6 hours into the cook and the internal temp is 170 (Nu-Temp calculated and double checked with a new instant read that I picked up during the cook). I paniced until I remembered Chris had added a recipe for Oven Finished Brisket. I pulled the brisket, foiled it and popped it in the oven at 300 degrees. 5:45pm temp is 195 so I pull it out and wrap another layer of foil and dump it in a cooler for the trip across town to the dinner party. The party was a huge success and everyone raved about my brisket. It was worth all the trouble and then some.
