My Wife FTW!

[DaveD]

Have a great birthday!

[SheilaAnn]

You got this!

[klflowers]

Happy bday.

[mrichie1229]

Happy Birthday PGH_RAM! Enjoy the cook and the delicious feast of smoked beast!

[Draznnl]

Happy Birthday. 🎂
Enjoy your brisket. I’m looking forward to seeing pictures from your cook. What a great present.

[Uncle Bob]

People with December birthdays deserve nothing but the best.

[realdocBBQ]

Dude, that's awesome.

And it looks like a great pick of a brisket, as well! Nice shape on that torpedo!

[PGH_RAM]

Yeah, she really paid attention when I complained about that one from Wild Fork.

[58limited]

Happy Birthday! What a thoughtful wife you have. 20 pounder, even trimmed, might be a tight fit on a kettle but it can be done.

[Oak Smoke]

Oh wow! That’s real love! Please take pictures of the finished product. A brisket that big should be incredible. Happy Birthday! How many years old will you be?

[PGH_RAM]

48.

[Skip]

Happy Birthday!

[Allon]

Happy Birthday !!!

A ticket, a tasket a brisket without the basket....

[PGH_RAM]

Well, there's no going back now. I'm officially in my first rodeo. The brisket is in my Weber kettle with a 2x2 snake of Kirkland briquettes and a few chunks of post oak.

I only had to remove about 3.25 lbs. from it, 2.25 lbs. fat and 1 lb. trim. By percentage of starting weight, that's got to be the lowest amount I've ever take off a packer brisket. So, cooking weight is just shy of 17 lbs. I only seasoned it with SPG because I want a flavor baseline for future cooks. It took a while for my kettle to get up to temp because it's 28F (feels like 18F) outside, but now it's sticking between 250F and 270F at the grate.

Nothing to do now but trust the process and my probes.

[PGH_RAM]

Four hours in, just before I rotated it to get the flat as far away as possible from the heat. My alarm went off for the flat reaching 175F, but the point was only at 155F.

[Draznnl]

The point is probably going to be probe tender before the flat. So, I agree with Jerod about focusing on flat temp. Good luck. Enjoy!

[PGH_RAM]

Jerod Broussard I definitely could've used that advice at 10PM. I totally hosed the placement of the probe in the flat for the first four hours of the cook.

[Jerod Broussard]

I've done almost 300 and I hose it almost everytime. The thing is you ain't gonna overcook it with a bad location anyways. Ultimately you looking for probe tenderness throughout the flat.

[Alan Brice]

Late to the game on this one. Happy Birthday! I have not seen prime packers at Costco in a very long while. Enjoy!

[Smoked Transistors]

I too have not seen Prime Packers at our local Costco's for a long time. I did score a Prime14 Lbs. Brisket Packer last Saturday morning. I was not looking for one specifically but strolled by the meat dept and to my surprise they had about five Prime grade briskets waiting for the taken, so i purchased one.

[SheilaAnn]

Which location? We go to Cypress, usually.

[Smoked Transistors]

SheilaAnn- Signal Hill is where i scored this one. Once in a while i'll check out Costco at the Lakewood Mall but both have not had any Prime packers in a long time. Sams Club seems to have them most of the time but we seem to shop Costco more frequently

[realdocBBQ]

Wowzers! Man, I can't believe your flat was at 175ºF after 4 hours... that's pretty fast cookin'! Are you sure it stayed at just 250-275ºF the whole time??? Of course, one of the problems with a snake method in a Weber kettle is naturally that as the snake burns along the circumference, the heat is focused in one area more than another, and that zone shifts as it progresses along the path of the snake. Naturally leading to a 'migrating hot zone'. I'd be interested to know if you think this affected things in your cook. ESPECIALLY cooking a big ol' brisket like that in a Weber kettle.

I'm happy for you that you got what really DOES look even more now like a great brisket, if you only had to trim off that little in the prep, that's awesome! Brisket yield has always been one of my biggest issues with buying it.

My last one, a Costco Prime packer:

17.5 lbs @ 4.29/lb
5.5 lbs of trim
Real cost of pre-cook meat - ~$6.25/lb

I hate all the years I've thrown that trim away! Of course, now that I've gotten into sausage making, that's become at least SOMEWHAT of a useable scrap. Also cooking down the trim into tallow, if you've got the time, the drive and the place to store it, is a good thing, as well.

But I want to know how your briskie turned out PGH_RAM?? In looking at the mid-cook picture, when I blew it up, it looked pretty lightly seasoned to me. Maybe that's how you like it. I personally like to go pretty heavy on the seasoning, since when you slice it, you're only getting an edge-on strip of that seasoned exterior with each brisket slice.

I know how it gets toward the end of a cook, you're tired, it's been a long day, you've got to get things pulled, sliced, served, maybe packaged, etc. Looking forward to your report (and any pictures! lol) of the end product!