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Dry Aging Brisket - UPDATE
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- Aug 2017
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OK grab your popcorn and beer, the day is finally here. As a quick recap, I wet aged a full packer brisket for 45 days and dry aged it in an Umai bag for another subsequent 45 days. Had no idea what to expect but based on some recent YouTube videos, it looked rather interesting.
So let's first talk about the brisket itself and what I expected. To be honest I scoffed at the videos that showed tons of juice running out of the dry aged briskets after they were cooked. Logically I thought that like dry aged rib-eyes I've done, the meat would loose moisture and thus the opposite would occur, the meat would be dense and somewhat dry. That couldn't have been further from the truth.
The brisket itself was a Costco Prime, weighing in at 16 lb 2 oz. As I usually do I cut off the thin flat and made pastrami with it. That knocked the overall weight down to right at 12 lbs. At that point the remainder, which had wet aged in the cryovac for 45 days, went into an Umai bag (see previous pix). So yesterday was the target 45th day of dry or a total of 90 days of wet/dry aging. Here is the result after months of being in my meat frig ....
As you can see, it lost over 26 ozs or about 14% of it's total weight in volume. That primary due to the Umai bag allowing moisture to escape while the enzymes naturally occurring in the meat begin to break down the connective tissue and collagen.
Unbagged it was like a giant piece of beef jerky, stiff as a board....
It almost appears to have a layer of plastic wrap glued on it. Well it had to come off so I carved away at the thing for a good 30 minutes. The resulting meat had a dark rosy color and the fat was remarkably like butter to the feel once it got a little warm. As you might also notice, this piece of brisket was full of fat, more so then I generally like. I just did a backyard trim instead of a full comp trim, so the deckle fat was left on....
So here's the bad news, by the time you get done trimming, you loose another 2.5 lbs of total volume. I ended up, bottom line, with about 7.5 lbs. of raw meat to cook. Given a whole bunch of fat will render and be cut away after the cook, I probably ended with a yield between 5-6 lbs. of meat. So, long wait and way less weight.
Regardless, I went ahead with the cook. This is where things got interesting. Decided not to do anything too out of the ordinary, so I went ahead and dry brined over night and seasoned with BBBR and extra pepper the next day. I also wanted to inject, fearing once again that the meat would come out dry. So I injected with one cup of Butcher's BBQ for Prime Brisket dissolved in some beef broth.
I used my pellet cooker set at 275* and put the brisket on at exactly 10 am ......
As usual I spritzed it every hour on the hour until it got up to about 160*. The whole time I'm waiting for a stall to occur but it never did. The thing just made a bee line to my target temp of 195*. it set off the alarm at almost exactly 7 hours into the cook. As I lifted the cooker lid the brisket began to wiggle like a piece of jello without even touching it. It probed like proverbial warm butter all over, so I pulled it, put it in a pan foiled up and into the oven to rest for about an hour and a half...
Well as you can immediately see the no-wrap bark turned out amazing. So I began to carve the flat thinking that would be the real acid test. Much to my amazement, it turned out soft, I mean almost pot roast soft. It was a bit over tenderized, the connective tissue and fat had completely dissolved and juice was running all over the cutting board....
Probably the most tender and juicy flat I've ever cooked. It had a nice mild taste as well, not like pot roast, but beefy. It literally melted in my mouth. The only assumption I can make is that I didn't need the injection and maybe, just maybe I could have pulled it at 190*.
As for the honey pot point end, well it was the same. Super juicy, extremely tender with rendered fat just gushing out....
All in all it couldn't have been a more perfect cook. The results; however, were not what I expected. I'm dying to do another one, this time adjusting the cook to try and achieve a firmer result. But I can tell you one thing, if you're a fan of aged steak, you're gonna love aged brisket, it's the bomb !!!
Did a little gai lan cooked in an oyster sauce, a few slices of brisket and a shrimp fried rice for dinner last night. Mighty tasty !!!
Henrik, you're up brother. Can't wait to see how his turns out !!!! Troutman is out !!!!
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Troutman I love ya brother and you have some serious bbq skills and thanks for taking the time to do this but I gotta say it. Messing with a brisket for 90 plus days and then losing 50% of the meat?
I have a hard time rationalizing this. I just can't convince myself that it can be that much better than a traditionally smoked brisket while adding all the extra time and sacraficing all that meat.
I don't know maybe my stubborn stick burning head makes me miss out on some real treats!
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BUT I don't think think everyone is taking into account the amount of weight a brisket typically weighs after cooking. Was this brisket any lighter AFTER cooking? Of course it was lighter before; it lost a lot of moisture. I didn't see an after-cook weigh in, nor do most people do an after-cook weigh-in. (At least I haven't seen any.)
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You do typically lose a lot when cooking but here you have to trim off the entire surface so there’s a quite a bit there.
Probably should start with the largest brisket one can find.
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Troutman do you mean SVQ, sous vide-q (using both sous vide and standard BBQ preparations) or is QVQ an acronym for something else I am not aware of?
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Red Man Polarbear777 I just called that SVQ, part of the SVQ style anyway. I never realized the order it was done in was its own acronym. Couldn't figure out where the extra Q came from.
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Call it what you want, but I’ve been disappointed with every SVQ recipe I’ve tried so I want to be explicit about the technique difference. I started calling it QVQ after PKBs interview.
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I do not believe we should leave you to yourselves to judge your own test. I being a self appointed professional taste tester believe I can be unbiased. Let me know the time and date and I will gladly test your next test results. (:Last edited by THE Humble Texan; March 11, 2019, 07:18 AM.
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I did this more out of disbelief and curiosity then anything. Brisket is a staple for me but waiting 45, much less 90 days, to cook a piece of meat kind of makes me lose interest. In fact I've kind of gotten away from aging steak, it's just not that much better to me. I also wanted to take one for the team and show you guys the results. I may do another one and tweak the timing while looking to start with a leaner piece of meat. Other than that, well I guess I can tick it off the ta do list !!
Regardless it was a lot of fun and now I'm itching to get back to more "normal" cooking. Got a freezer full of meat in the que, need to get to cookin' it !! Hope you enjoyed this !!
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Founding Member - Moderator Emeritus
- Jul 2014
- 5025
- Stockholm, Sweden
-
Author of the book Barbecue, fire and smoke
Manufacturer of:
Hank's Bonafide Beef Rub
Hank's KC Royale Pork 'n Poultry Rub
Hank's Signature Steak Rub
Grills
Big Green Egg (M)
Weber 22" kettle (lime green)
PK TX
8 noname 22" kettles (black)
"Rude Boy" - my own custom built offset smoker
Thermometers
iGrill 2
Thermapen
Fireboard
Accessories
BBQ Dragon
Slow n' Sear
All my recipes, photos and information can be found at
https://hankstruebbq.com
YouTube channel
https://www.youtube.com/c/Hankstruebbq
Alright, the wait is over, here's my take on dry aging a brisket for 60 days.
Executive Summary
I have now smoked my dry aged brisket. I used my own rub and smoked it with cherry wood on the Weber kettle with the Slow 'N Sear. It went fast, and it tasted amazing.
Cameo role
You may notice a four legged meat inspector named Sally, eagerly hovering the premises :-)
Hickups
I used the Fireboard + Pit Viper. Or I planned to anyway. I wanted a smooth cook that I didn't have to baby sit. But the Fireboard refused to work with the Pit Viper fan. I got it running as always, and set the target temp to 130 deg C. The fan started blowing. After a while it stopped. No matter if I rebooted the FB or set the target temp to various values, it didn't work. I tried switching to manual mode and specified a fan speed the fan should run at. Nothing. Very frustrating. This is the third consecutive time the FB+PV fails me.
In the first hour the temp was all over the place, until I pulled the plug and decided to run manually. Also, I moved the probes halfways through, so I don't have a pretty chart to show you.
Except for that? Good times. The brisket was the most tender brisket I have ever eaten. I did leave the flat on, even though it was way too thin. And the flat came out dry. But that has nothing to do with the dry aging. The flat was simply too.....flat. I’m making chili out of that one.
The verdict
Will I do another one? Yes, it was easy. Storing a brisket in the fridge was zero effort, and except for that it is the same routine as any other brisket. It cooks faster too, which was nice. But is the difference huge? No. I think a well smoked, juicy ’regular’ brisket is delicious as is. I think dry aging lends itself better for steaks. My reasoning is that you can taste the dry aging better in a steak that isn't cooked to such high internal temps. But it sure was tender!
/Hank, over 'n out
Timings
09:00 - brisket on the grill
13:00 - past micro-stall (temp was 78 deg C / 172 deg F). Could have more bark, but it felt right, so I wrapped it.
14:00 - wobbly, tender, time to take it off the grill. Internal temp was 90 deg C / 195 deg F). Into the faux cambro
16:00 - dinner
Oh, and here's the video. It took a while to make, so I hope you appreciate it. Heck, I even created the music for it. Have a smokin' weekend y'all!
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The fireboard I have had issues with as well. Email them and they will help. Also power cycling it completely and killing the app and restarting usually works.
The nice thing about a fan controller is that if you do have problems, running manually is an easy switch.Last edited by Polarbear777; March 15, 2019, 07:14 AM.
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Thanks Polarbear777, good to know. Sent an email to their support today. Extremely annoying. I hope they can fix it.
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OUT FRIGGIN' STANDING VIDEO !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Couple of observations;
1) Surprised you hit a stall. Mine acted like it wanted to get cooked. My graph disappeared on my new Signals app but it was almost a 45* angle, shot up without any effort. Fasted cooked brisket ever.
2) I started cutting off the thin flats a long time ago and making pastrami or burgers out of it. I just can't ever get a flat to do what I want it to do, especially knowing that you're going to lose volume during this process.
3) I think we both agree that it's an outstanding result, the tenderness is off the charts, but not something you'd want to do regularly. Kind of a novelty really, but a great result none-the-less.
4) I've been thinking of having revolving briskets, always have one dry aging and another one staggered wet aging. That way I always have a brisket in the que, either a normal one or a dry aged one every other month. That way the process doesn't seem that long of a wait !!
5) I'd email Fireboard immediately using your AR email (hint, hint) and tell them your issue. It may just be your cable. Does the Fireboard seem to work otherwise? When I had my problem last fall they replaced my unit, no questions. Of course I was still under warranty. The power of AR will get things sorted.
Well, as usual my Swedish brother in smoke, another outstanding job on your part. I enjoyed this collaboration, hope we can do it again some time !!
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