enzymes!!

You forgot the secret ingredient of antifreeze.

Okay, I'm doing a brisket today and experimenting a bit with this strategy.

I have about an 8 lb brisket, before I trimmed the fat off (normally leave it on). I gave it a good overnight coating of rub.

Started the fire at 8 AM (Eastern). Brisket went on around 9:00. I've been keeping the temp around 290 - 310 at grill level. Heavy on the smoke.

Will foil it soon, once the temp of the meat gets to 150 or so. I'll take it to 195 rather slowly then let it sit for an hour or two.

cd, how much, if any, fat did you leave?

What type of wood are you using?

Very little of the cap. I wanted the smoke to penetrate the meat.

A little hickory, but mostly apple. This is the apple tree that Phil and FMB! cut down a couple years ago. I traded Phil a 12-pack of beer for some of it. I've only BBQ'd half-a-dozen times since then, so I still have some left. Really nice smoking wood.

Well, that went fast.

After about 3 hours it was up to 150. Wrapped it in foil and an hour later it's near temp. I'll take it out in a few minutes and store it in the playmate wrapped in towels till we eat, around 4PM EST.

Brisket
Hot German potato salad
Corn on the Cob (silkless huskon method)
Sliced Tomatoes
Cherry Pie and ice cream

Not to derail, but I would be interested in seeing your Hot German potato salad recipe.

me too

That was a good investment of a 12 pack.

Did you spray or baste the brisket during cooking? Did it cook directly on the grate or in a foil pan? I ask because I've done that using a brisket with little fat.

Make sure to post after dinner, I want to hear the results.

I burned through that stuff pretty fast. Good stuff. Also went through my parents' wild cherry pretty quick.

Hot German potato salad:

4 lbs red potatoes
1 medium onion, diced
6 slices bacon
1/2 cup sugar
3 T flour
2 t salt
fresh ground pepper to taste
1 cup red cider vinegar
1 cup water

1. Boil potatoes until fork tender. Drain and cut into uniform size pieces about 1-inch. You can either leave the skins on or take them off. I leave about 3/4 of them on.

2. Fry the bacon until crisp in a large skillet. I use an electric skillet.

3. Saute the onion in the hot bacon grease for 3 min or so.

4. Mix together the sugar, flour, salt and pepper in a bowl. Add to onions, until the mixture is sticking to the onions and grease.

5. Add the vinegar and water. Stir to dissolve the sugar and flour. Bring to boiling. Cook, stirring frequently for about 2 minutes.

6. Add the potatoes and stir to coat evenly. Heat through. Turn off heat and cover with a kitchen towel. Allow to sit for 1-2 hours.

7. Just before serving, crumble the bacon over the top and stir.

I cooked the first 3 hours directly on the grate without basting. At the end of 3 hours, I would estimate that no more than 2 T of liquid was sitting in the bottom of the smoker. None had dripped out the grease trap at all. So a foil pan would not have done anything except block smoke. Internal temp of the meat was 150F.

I then wrapped it in two layers of HD aluminum foil. It came up to 195 very quickly, about 45 minutes. I didn't look at the smoker temp very much during this time, but I would guess it averaged around 250.

Once it reached 195, I wrapped it in a towel and put it in my playmate cooler. I left the thermometer in so I could monitor the temp. After about 40 minutes it had dropped to 175 or so. I boiled some water and put the pot on top of the brisket and closed the cooler. It was in the cooler for about 3 hours and didn't ended at 165.

When I pulled it out of the cooler to slice, I drained about 2 cups of liquid from the foiled brisket. This all came from the meat since I didn't add a drop of liquid. I'm going to save this smoky, spicy wonderfulness for some kind of soup or chili.

All of the meat had excellent smoky flavor. The smoke ring penetrates a full 1/4 inch into the meat. The point (what little there was) was cooked to perfection (tender, juicy, smoky). I've only cut up part of the flat. It has great flavor, adequate moisture (not juicy, not dry), and is fairly tender. In the past, I've cooked a brisket for 18 hours and the flat was just about falling apart. The brisket I cooked today still has most of it's connective tissue. I'd say the connective tissue in the flat is the biggest difference between this brisket and the 18-hour brisket. Considering I'm done eating and the 18-hr version would still have 9 hours or so to go, this was a pretty fair trade off.

I use lump charcoal for most of the heat and save the apple for smoke. Today I used:

one 2" x 9" apple
two or three 1" x 9" apple
one 1-1/2" x 1-1/2" hickory chunk

about 5 or 6 lbs of lump charcoal

I put the big apple piece and hickory chunk on at the same time at the beginning. There was smoke pouring out the smoke stack and wisps coming out from the lid for the first hour. I think that is what gave the great smoke ring and flavor.

If anyone is using the potato salad recipe, note that I initially typed in the wrong amount of flour (from memory). I fixed it now in the original post.

thanks for sharing the recipe, will try soon