Beef Brisket, Smoked

We bought a smoker two years ago. I thought "how hard could this be, I grew up with a wood stove, I got this". Yeah, apples and oranges as we came to learn. This is our beast today

Back in the day, you loaded the fire box up, closed the dampers, and had a steady heat all night. So naturally I did the same thing with the first few pieces of meat we tried to smoke. To quote my father "it was burnt". You hear all about smoked brisket so that was our first couple attempts. Both ended up getting tossed into the woods in a fit of anger and pizza was the meal of the night.
I later learned through asking friends who smoked meat, and a LOT of help from Smoking Meat we figured out a small fire with all the vents and dampers wide open was the way to go. This is what the smoke stack looks like when you have it right

One of the tricks learned from the web was to place your next few sticks of wood on top of the fire box, heating it up prior to placing it in the fire. This cuts down on the creosote in the smoke chamber and wont ruin the meat.

Now getting down to the meat portion of this story. A beef brisket when bought whole has two parts, the thick end, and the tip. I cut the brisket in half, smoking one or the other, today was the thick end. I rubbed the meat down with a dry rub, then placed it in a two gallon freezer bag. The brisket was left in the beer cooler for ten days to get all happy with flavor.

After the fire got going and we had a hot bed of coals, the brisket was placed in the smoke chamber and the thermometer was hooked up to it. For pull apart with your finger tender, your internal meat temp needs to be 200*, and I try to keep the smoke chamber at 250* the entire smoke.

About five hours into the cook, we opened her up to add water to the water tray, and this was what we had

Once the internal temp was right, we took the brisket off and wrapped it in foil, and then wrapped in in two towels to hold the heat, and let the meat 'rest' for about three hours. Then the magic moment when we cut her open to slice

We are pretty sure you could cut this one with a butter knife, it was just falling apart tender. This morning, one slice was sacrificed for breakfast. Sliced thin with a slice or two of onion

As "Melquita" use to say...If it feeds you twice, it's worth the price. This one did. Hope y'all enjoy reading about it as much as we enjoyed eating it.
K&K