A great coach once said, 'You don't practice until you get it right...you practice until you can't get it wrong.' Apparently, I need some more practice! I woke up at 3:50am Sunday morning and put a 10.6 lb Brisket and a 8.9 lb Butt on my buddy Cam's Bandera Smoker. We intend to use this smoker for Brisket and Pork in the Valley Smokin BBQ Comp in October, so I figured it makes sense to practice in the unit we will be using. So glad I did.
I battled the smoker temp all day to the point of exhaustion. I find the Bandera Smoker very difficult to keep the temp up in and resort to throwing whole oak logs in the firebox to get it where it needed to be. I had a few spikes up to 275 - 300, but I think that my occasional dip to 150 caused much bigger problems. Tomorrow, I will do a separate post with the actual temps charted out along with the meat temps.
Here are a few things I decided to test out in this practice round:
Hypothesis #1:
Cooking pork over the brisket improves moisture in Brisket - One of the guys from Dizzy Pig told me earlier this summer that they liked to cooked their brisket underneath of a pork shoulder so that the fat from the Pork drips down on the brisket and helps baste it throughout the cooking process.
My Conclusion:
I don't think this technique helps. I ended up overcooking the Brisket a bit (it went to 204) and it turned out a little dry and a very mild 'crumbly'. It would not have scored really high in a competition. Once it was done, there was still a large layer of brisket fat on top that was very moist and this should be enough moisture to baste the meat. Basically, brisket is not moist because the layer of fat melts down into the meat. It is moist because the temp was in the right zone for the right amount of time....not too short and not too long. If you shoot your temp too high, you break down the proteins which will release the natural moisture from the meat and it won't matter what you put on it, it will be dry and crumbly. Would love to hear what others think.
Hypothesis #2:
Cooking Butt fat side up vs fat side down does not matter much.
My Conclusion:
I believe this is true. I tried cooking fat side down for the first time and the pork was still extremely moist. That being said, I am sticking with fat side up for now on since this did drastically improve my results. I see no reason to change.
Lessons learned:
1) I think that large pieces of meat (11 lb briskets) are too large to put low in a vertical style smoker because they block the heat flow to the meats above it. I ended up slightly overcooking the brisket, but undercooked the smaller pork butt that was cooking above it in the smoker. I didn't realize this was happening until very late in the cooking process. I thought that since heat rises, the region above the brisket would be hotter and I guess I was wrong.
2) Just cooking a butt for 14 hours doesn't mean it is going to be perfect. If the internal temp doesn't reach 190, the meat will not have the proper texture. I topped out at 175 and the bone fell out, as it should, but the texture was a little too firm in most parts. See my 'practice data' post to see what happened exactly.
3) When removing foiled meat from the smoker and placing in the cooler, put the brisket in a pan of some sort to catch any juices that leak out. I wrapped mine in a towel, which soaked up all of the juice that leaked out through an unknown hole in the foil. I was very upset!
4) Trimming fat from the brisket is important. I didn't touch the thick large layer of fat on top before rubbing and I could not taste that the rub in the meat.
I am trying to graph out my temp chart for the cook and will post that soon.
If you have an opinion on anything I said above, please comment. I am looking for as much input as possible.
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