My Brisket Stream of Consciousness

[smarkley]

Must A Been a H3##a Party... hahahaha

[Buster99]

I am in the same boat as you, I'm 1-2 on the brisket ( me losing) let me know how yours turned out

[PaulstheRibList]

Well, how did it turn out?

[_John_]

That's part of the fun! Once you get good at it this will be second nature. Don't pull it early, too many people make that mistake. What temp are you at?

[SenatorShriv]

Friends came over. Got drunk. No longer stressed about the crutch or the cooler. Amazing what beer can do.

Moving into crutch now. Should be interesting.

[SenatorShriv]

Got distracted while cooking down the fat for the beef love. Think I burned it. Will make another attempt in a few minutes. Perhaps I don't have the attention span for this...

starting to get anxious about the finishing process. I'm going to wait for another 45 minutes and then crutch it to get it up to 200ish and then throw it in a cooler to bring it back down to 170 - 180. I've never used the crutch or the cooler method before so I'm a little nervous.

Read someplace (probably here) about wrapping it in a towel before sticking it in the cooler. I'm guessing that I'm not supposed to use my wife's linens but am not clear on what the point of this is so I may just skip it.

Also struggling to resist the urge to cut a few sample slices off the ends just to see where I'm at. This may be the toughest part of all!

[SenatorShriv]

Whelp... fell asleep and woke up to the grill being up waaaay over what it had been holding at for a couple of hours. Not sure why it would suddenly jump like that. popped lid open for a while to cool it down and turned down the burners, we'll see if I can keep it low enough.

Also not sure why my thermometer didn't alert me. I thought I had it programmed so that I would get an alarm above 260. lost the instruction manual for my thermometer so I'll have to rock the googles to figure out whats up with that.

My dog has been circling the grill like a wolf circles an injured animal. I think that this is a good sign.

[SenatorShriv]

Basically. In Anchorage we technically have a sunset but its at 11:30 and it rises again at 4:30 am or something like that. It never really gets dark but hangs in a kind of twilight phase. The extra sunlight makes people a little manic so we probably won't bust into this guy until 8:30 or 9:00 tonight and that will be fine, even on a school night.

[smarkley]

Picture looks good... you should have a good cook.

Is it staying light up there, all night now?

[SenatorShriv]

[SenatorShriv]

smarkley nailed it, what I don't use for a mop I will use for some of the leaner caribou and moose.

I'm going to try a little bit of beef love to start hitting it later in the cook just to see what happens

[smarkley]

I would be leery of injecting now... you should be good, just keep that pan of water/beer in the cooker going.

[smarkley]

I was thinking, since he lives in Alaska and may have access to moose or elk... maybe save that fat and grind it up with some elk or moose for awesome burger... just an idea

[PaulstheRibList]

SenatorShriv great to hear from you. The brisket fat makes great Beef Love, as Meathead calls it, for using when doing the Reverse Sear on steaks. I've never thought about using that as the oil for lubing the brisket when applying the rub, so that could be great. Since I've never heard of any competition guys or otherwise using oil to lube the brisket during the cook, I'm not sure how I feel about that. Adding more oil during the cook may invite a burn? Injecting mid cook, haven't heard of that either.
Why don't you post a pic of the cook right now so we can all take a look at it.

[SenatorShriv]

Roger that. Thank Smarkley!

- Rain stopped now having trouble keeping the grill at a low enough temperature.
- Tossed a pan with some beer and garlic in there just for the heck of it. I used this an excuse to crack a few cold ones for myself.
- Ended up having to trim a lot of fat from the beast the other night (because the ONLY butcher shop in Anchorage Alaska has no idea what they're doing!) Now I've got a ton of fat trimmings. Guess I'll play around with turning it into some sort of mop sauce. Suggestions are welcome. My thought is that dosing it in its own rendered fat every once in a while isn't going to hurt it.
- Found some beef broth at the house I didn't know we had. I was originally going to skip the injection because I forgot to get the broth at the store and didn't want to go back to the grocery store last night. Now I'm contemplating injecting it mid cook. Thoughts, comments, concerns?