How to Smoke Brisket in a Charcoal BBQ for Beginners

Do you want to learn how to smoke brisket? Then stick around because in this video I'm going to show you how to smoke brisket in a charcoal barbecue. All right so we're going to be working with a full brisket today. Now this one weighs about six and a half kilos and we're going to get started by trimming it up. All right so we'll start by flipping it over and we'll trim the underside first. You've always got a big pocket of fat here so we'll work on taking that out. All right so that's about as much as I'll take off there for now. So we'll spin it around and now we want to work on taking some of this hard fat off the bottom. You don't have to get all of it the thin layers will render down and because this end of the flat is very thin I'm just going to square it off through here. All right now I'm pretty happy with how that underside is looking so we'll flip it over and get started on the top. So you want to make your brisket a nice uniform shape so I'm just going to trim this top flap off. The more evenly you trim your brisket the more even it's going to cook. Now I'm working on the point end here now there's so much intramuscular fat in there you can afford to trim a lot of this top fat off but on the flat side here it's a little bit leaner so you definitely want to try and leave a nice even fat coverage on there. And you really want to try and trim your brisket in a way that no juices will pull up anywhere on it. I know it's going to be hard to avoid sometimes but if you can definitely try and trim it that way. And your brisket trimmings don't throw them away if you've got anything around 80% lean meat and 20% fat. Keep it as it makes for the best burger patties if you've got a mincer and any hard fat I like to keep I'll put that in a pot later on render it down and make some beef tallow. Now this side of the brisket is a lot thinner than the other so I'm just going to run my knife down this side and just square it off a little bit. Alright now I'm happy with both sides of this brisket it's nice and uniform so let's season it up. Alright so seasoning your brisket now if you've got a favorite beef rub go ahead and use that or salt and pepper always does the trick. Some of the best briskets I've tasted is just a 50-50 mix of kosher salt and cracked black pepper which is the base for what we're going to be using today but we've topped it up with some steak shooter and garlic gulls. So that's what I've prepared here in this little shaker so we'll get it mixed up and season this brisket. Alright so we'll flip our brisket over and season the bottom side first. I'll give it a light coat in mustard just to help bind our rubs and then you want to sprinkle from a height so you get a nice even coverage and give the bottom side of our brisket a nice generous coat. Don't forget the ends as well then we can flip it over and do the top. Alright so now our brisket is trimmed and seasoned we can get started on setting up our barbecue. Alright so we're going to be using the Oklahoma Joe's blackjack kettle so we'll get started by opening it up and taking our cooking grate out. Then you want to open up some briquettes now you can either rip the bag open or usually one side you can just untie the string a few times and then you should be able to just pull it and open it up like so and we're going to be using the snake method today so with your briquettes you want to just stack them up like so in a domino fashion. Alright so the bottom layer of our snake is done now if you were using larger briquettes you'd just run a single stack through the middle for our second layer but because these briquettes are a little bit smaller we're going to keep a double stack on top. Alright so our snake is pretty much done as you can see we've built it most of the way around our charcoal grate but we've just left a gap here and that's where our startup briquettes are going to go. So in a charcoal chimney you want to get about 12 briquettes then we'll get a couple of fire lighters going we'll get our briquettes on top and we'll wait until they are nice red hot ashed over and ready to go. So while your briquettes are coming along use that time to get some other things ready you'll need for this cook so we've got a foil tray ready we've got some smoking wood ready i'm going to be using a combination of pecan and cherry but if you've got another favorite smoking wood for beef go ahead and use that and we've also got our grill probe ready now this barbecue has a temperature gauge on the lid but as usual heat rises and you do normally get a slightly higher reading at lid level as opposed to grill level so that's all we need to do now until these briquettes are ready so we'll come back when they are ready. Alright so our briquettes are pretty much ready so i'm going to get this smoking wood on so we'll lay down a piece of our pecan piece of our cherry another piece of pecan and we'll save our other piece of cherry to put on at the start of our snake where our startup briquettes are going to go and that's what you want to see with your startup briquettes you want to see them nice ashed over and red hot so we'll dump those in at the start of our snake and then you just want to stack them up nicely at the start now you want to make sure they are all over the unlit stuff and then we can shut our lid and then we'll make sure our top and bottom vents are wide open so i get questions all the time about the snake method and if it produces dirty smoke throughout the cook due to all the unlit briquettes that you use for the snake now the answer to that question is no not when you set it up right because we're giving our barbecue five to ten minutes to preheat that's going to preheat our briquettes to a hot enough temperature that they will catch light from our red hot ones without producing dirty smoke it's the same concept as the minion method where you're using a bunch of unlit briquettes to fuel a really long slow burning fire for a long smoke like this as long as you use red hot briquettes to start your snake and you preheat your barbecue everything around it will be preheated enough to catch light cleanly without producing dirty smoke so i hope that answers that question but if you do have any more questions don't hesitate to ask them in the comments below but for now we'll be back once this barbecue's had five to ten minutes to preheat all right so as you can see nice clean burning smoke our barbecue's nice and preheated so we'll open it up and as you can see our unlit briquettes are already starting to catch light from our startup briquettes so we'll get our foil tray in we'll get our piece of cherry on at the start we'll get our cooking grate on we'll get our brisket on and you want to make sure that your brisket is never over the burning part of the snake so later in this cook once our snake starts burning around here we're just going to rotate our brisket around away from it and i've also positioned the thicker part of our brisket which is the point end closer to the snake which is just going to help it cook a little bit more evenly and then we can hook up our grill probe i'm just going to clip it in up the back here and then we can close our lid and let this brisket start smoking away all right now our brisket's on we're just going to get our barbecue to a nice smoking temperature for this cook i'm going to look to stabilize our barbecue off at around that 275 fahrenheit or 135 celsius range and in this video we're going to be running through everything step by step so the next thing you'll see is how i like to stabilize my temperatures off so i'm going to leave our top and bottom vents wide open until we get back up to around the 225 fahrenheit or 110 celsius at grill level so we'll come back once we've hit that stage so it's been about 15 minutes since we shut that bottom vent down to almost closed it's sitting just a crack open at the moment and again our top vent is sitting wide open now i've been keeping an eye on our temperature at grill level and it's been sitting really stable for the last five minutes so now's the time you want to make any further adjustments if you need to increase temperature open that bottom vent up slightly if you need to decrease it then shut it down a little bit now i will always try to stabilize off a little bit lower than where i want to be at as it's much easier to increase temperature than to decrease your temperature it can be quite challenging bringing your temperatures back down if they have gotten away from you and for whatever reason if your temperatures have gotten away from you and you've closed that bottom vent down to pretty much shut don't be afraid to pour a little bit of water in that drip tray below your brisket that's going to absorb a lot of heat and really help to stabilize your temperatures off so for the first couple of hours of this cook this is where you really want to just keep an eye on your temperatures and find that sweet spot with your vent set up and that's going to really vary depending on what type of barbecue you're using how hot it is outside how windy it is what type of briquettes you're using and much more it's all about finding and understanding what works for you making any adjustments needed and building off that so we're going to continue to let our brisket smoke away and we'll keep checking in throughout this cook all right so it's been a couple of hours since we last checked in so we're going to have a look at our brisket and as you can see where our snake's burning it's getting close to being underneath that brisket so we're just going to rotate our cooking grate around and now that's giving us some good distance between the burning part of the steak and our brisket and while we're here i'm just going to spritz our brisket with some water that's just really going to help with some moisture retention and bark formation you don't want to leave your lid open for too long so we'll close it back up and let it keep smoking away all right so our brisket's looking great that bark's coming along nice and our temperatures have been holding beautifully so all we're going to do now is let this brisket go for about another hour that's going to take us to around the four hour mark into this cook so the next time we check our brisket we're going to be checking the internal temperature and we'll potentially wrap it or boat it as well so we'll be back once we've hit that stage all right so we've just ticked over the four hour mark into this cook so let's have a good look at this brisket all right so our temperature's still holding nicely so just be mindful whenever you've got your lid open you are letting lots of oxygen in so you might see a spike in temperature when you do close your lid again but for now let's have a look at these internals so the two things i like to look for before i wrap or boat a brisket is being at an internal temperature of around 160 fahrenheit or 71 degrees celsius we're a bit further behind in the point so when we boat this i'm going to position the point a bit closer to the fire so it catches up i'm happy with the bark you should be able to touch around and it shouldn't be coming off on your finger that's when you know your bark's set and we're going to boat this one which is going to really help preserve that bark too so we'll get some alfoil ready and then we'll boat it up all right so get two layers of good quality foil ready carefully get this brisket out while we're playing around with the brisket we'll close our lid again and now we just want to fold the foil up around the brisket and i'm quickly going to get our foil tray out and i'm going to use those beautiful drippings to go back into our brisket so pour them over get our tray back in get our cooking grate back on and then our brisket and like i said that point end is now closer towards where that fire is burning so that internal temperature is going to catch up to the flat side right so now our brisket's back in we just need to let that smoke away until we're ready to check for probe tenderness and i'm going to start doing that once we reach an internal temperature in both ends of around that 200 fahrenheit or 93 degrees celsius mark now it can be challenging to get both ends of your brisket to the same internal temperature that's why it's always important to rotate whatever end is behind closer towards the fire where it's going to be a little bit hotter now to get to that internal temperature where we're going to start checking for probe tenderness might take us two hours to get there it might take four it might even take six i don't like putting a time on these things that's why it's always better to get your brisket on earlier than what you think that way if it is done a little bit earlier you can always rest it up until you're ready to serve it we're just going to be patient if our brisket stalls we're just going to ride through it we're not going to panic we're not going to increase temperatures we're just going to simply let it go until it pushes through it so be patient with your brisket we'll keep checking back in throughout this cook so we'll come back soon all right so it's been about three hours since we last checked in so that means we're about seven hours total into this cook now our barbecue's been holding beautifully around that temperature we want it to be at so let's have a look at this brisket all right so i haven't had to do too much all i've been doing is rotating the brisket away from the hottest part of the snake i've faced the point end towards the fire so it can catch up a little bit we're about 180 internal in there in our flat we're at about 185 so as you can see the two ends are starting to cook nice and even we've still got about two hours left on our snake i reckon so let's keep this lid closed and let this brisket keep going so in them three hours that passed since we boated our brisket we did hit a stall for about an hour of that time we got stuck at about that 165 fahrenheit internal mark but like i mentioned earlier we were just patient and it eventually pushed through it so that brisket is looking absolutely fantastic i'm really happy with it all i'm going to do now is keep checking it every 45 minutes to an hour i'll have a probe around i'll check my internals and if you wanted to put a probe in each end of the brisket by all means go ahead and do that but i'm happy with how that's coming along so we'll check back in soon all right it's been two hours since we last checked in so we're about nine hours in total into this cook i reckon this brisket will be pretty close to being ready so let's have another probe around temperature check 196 in the thickest part of the point 29 start a probe quite nice do it a little bit to go 198 it's quite soft there very soft there 201 we're almost at the end of our snake it's burning hottest a bit back here so i reckon that's got another hour's burn time i don't reckon our brisket will be far off maybe another half an hour to 45 minutes so we'll check back in then all right it's been an hour and a half since we last checked in i did check it after about 45 minutes and it wasn't quite there but this is feeling nice and soft now up around the 203 sort of range it's just probing like butter and as you can see our snake's pretty much at the end so that's a pretty good 10 and a half hour burn time so i've put some high heat gloves on and we are carefully going to lift this brisket out all right so when you get your brisket out i always like to just let it steam off for five minutes just to stop that cooking process so you don't overcook it and when it comes to resting you've got a few options based on when you want to serve your brisket if it's ready four or five hours in advance it's always a good idea to rest it in an esky they hold the heat really well and they'll keep the brisket hot at a really good eating temperature until you're ready to serve it or you can hold a brisket in the oven at about that 70 degrees celsius or 160 ish fahrenheit and i've done that for about 24 hours until i've been ready to serve it the next day but today i'm just going to let it rest at room temperature for an hour because i want to serve it in an hour and then i'll slice and serve it so we'll come back when we're ready to do that all right i'm just about ready to slice this brisket but i don't want to waste those juices in the foil so i'm going to put it in this container and then we'll get into slicing this brisket so i'll make a little lip in the foil and i'll carefully pick it up put the lid on we can save that for a future cook all right so i'll slice it straight down the middle all right so that's the end piece of our flat as you can see juicy all the way through still pulls apart with ease that is a great brisket all right so slicing the flat is pretty straightforward but as you get into the point we've got the flat muscle more on this side so what i like to do is on this side where you've got that big point muscle is we can start taking slices off this way and that's where you start getting them beautiful fatty point slices from which are my personal favorite and once you've only got that little bit of point muscle left i like to just trim it off like so dice those pieces up and then turn it back to the way you were slicing the flat and continue slicing like so you get these beautiful little slices of flat but either these little cubes of point or the point and slices would have to be my favorite so let's have a taste all right time for a taste i'm gonna go for one of these little point cubes oh man that is incredible try a bit of this beautiful little flat so tender so juicy that is up there with one of the best briskets i've had such amazing bark incredible taste texture so juicy everything you want in a brisket and i can't recommend boating your brisket enough i absolutely love that method it would have to be my favorite out of wrapping in foil wrapping in butcher's paper or anything else i've had the best results every time i do it and as you can see this brisket turned out amazing well if enjoyed the video everyone and you learned something from it be sure to subscribe to our channel so you don't miss any of our future videos but for now that's the end of this video so thanks for watching and we'll see you next time