Colorado B.S. Thread

If you can, just start the brisket first thing in the morning. Ideally it's finished an hour or more before it's time to eat, and you wrap it in towels and put it in an empty cooler to let it rest before eating - basically just take it off heat and insulate well so it'll still be warm a few hours later when you eat. The resting helps make it even more tender and re-absorb some of the juices, and you can have a more predictable meal time instead of trying to predict when the meat will be ready. My dad does that with his briskets and it works great.

 

I can do pork shoulder or turkey pretty reliably for dinner/lunch with proper planning. Brisket never goes according to plan. The stall always gets me. I have a master built electric and it is definitely cheating. I am hoping to get a barrel smoker this year. I usually leave the pan with apple juice or apple cider vinegar. A spray bottle works well too though

 

Yeah, ribs are easy to time. The stall is a PITA for both pork butt/shoulder and brisket for me. Sometimes I'll start it the night before and not ashamed to foil at the stall

 

I don't think anyone should feel guilty for using a pellet or electric smoker. Is it easier? Sure, but that doesn't make it cheating. You're just utilizing tools to fine tune your process. Cheating would be paying someone to prepare and cook the brisket just like paying the smart kid in class to let you look over their shoulder during the test.

For me, the most interesting part of smoking something like brisket is learning how to read and prepare the cut. You can buy two 12 lb packer briskets and neither will cook the same. Maybe the deckle is different. Maybe the butcher cut one less even than the other. Maybe you trimmed too much fat in some areas or left too much in others. Having to spend all day managing the fire adds a variable I don't want to manage. If you want to and know how to manage a fire with that much control for hours on end, then mad props to you. I'm not that guy.

If you get a full packer brisket, then it's difficult not to dry out the flat while trying to get the point to temp. I was in the habit for a little while of moving two ambient thermometers around inside my smoker to identify hot/cold spots so I could know which way to rotate the flat and point. It helped a little. Eventually, I started experimenting with trimming more of the deckle to deflate the point a little more. This helped more than anything, but it leaves the point looking rather odd and you could argue is... drum roll... cheating.

As for managing the stall, I prefer butcher paper over foil. It helps preserve a nice bark around the brisket without making it soggy. Every time I use foil, it ends up resembling pot roast. Don't get me wrong, I love a good pot roast, but it's not what I want when I'm cooking brisket. But, a lot of people love how brisket turns out with foil, so it all comes down to preference.

I usually start a brisket right before bedtime and set the smoker to maintain 180º. If the house hasn't burned down by morning, I check it when I wake and bump the temp to 225º. Once the stall hits, wrap it in butcher paper. In time crunches, I'll bump the temp to 300º or so just to finish it off because by that time, it's already been cooking for well over 12 hours and has a solid smoke ring, so raising the ambient temp for like 30 minutes just to get the brisket to the target internal temp doesn't change much.

I wish we could organize a Tacomaworld brisket swap, but that would be next to impossible to time. It'd be a lot of fun lining up everyone's briskets and sampling them side-by-side.

 

We had a tree removed yesterday without ever giving the tree trimmer the approval. Hell, we never even talked to him until the tree was down. Had our realtor not been here, we would have come home and had no knowledge of where the 100 year old, 40’ juniper tree went.

The contractor was working based on texts with someone that gave him the ok. WTF has this world become?

Anyone here have a tree chipping business in the area of Denver?

 

These guys in Englewood are pretty good
https://treeservicesdenver.co/

 

was this you??
Arvada family searches for answers after tree was removed from their property - CBS Colorado (cbsnews.com)

 

Nope, not us.

 

TEN THOUSAND PAGES!

 

oh god smoked queso and some chips with fresh salsa sounds divine

 

used to be an average month in here

We really used to know how to BS in here.

 

Can confirm.. the first time though I goofed cause of course timing got me... Takes a good while to melt the cheese slowly. I cranked the heat up cause we had to roll out and it ended up pulling a lot of the oils out of the cheese. The next time I started earlier and once it all melted I kept it at that temp until serving time.

 

mmmmmm

goddamnit, Im hungry now lol

i haven't used my smoker since I moved, maybe I should change that

 

I do the best i can to keep it going. The cottonwood thread see a lot more action these days.

 

Bitches love your trains.

 

Perfect that it has 69 votes currently too.

I need to come up with a new title and poll one of the years.

 

That surprised me too, didn't think there were that many on here.

 

guilty

 

I mean, how can you not

 

https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=612cCXWViwU