Be careful not to get in a YouTube rabbit hole, unless you have a lot of time on your hands!
I’m pretty sure I’ve seen broken-up bourbon barrel wood in plastic packages sold in the BBQ / Grill accessories aisle in Home Depot or Lowes. Or there’s always Amazon. But really, I don’t know how much flavor difference it would make vs. ordinary seasoned oak. Just an interesting experiment really, that’s all.
Yeah, I’m probably going to do the Lawry salt method, so that’s enough experimentation for one bbq session.
My standard is a mix of oak and pecan these days. I like oak or apple as a base wood, and then I use hickory, pecan, or maple as my flavoring wood. At least that’s how it’s organized in my brain. I honestly couldn’t tell you how much of a difference it makes in the final flavor, other than I don’t want to overpower the meat with smoke, which something like hickory can do if you use too much of it. (Or mesquite, but I only use mesquite for grilling for this reason. It’s just too harsh for smoking for my tastes.)
Mmm, I like both mesquite and hickory for smoking beef, because I think its flavor can stand up to it. Oak is milder than either, though.
FWIW, in the Mad Scientist video he and Harry Soo agreed the bourbon barrel smoke didn’t add anything to the brisket - they couldn’t detect anything different than a regular oak wood smoking.
Yeah, I kind of suspected as much, but good to have it confirmed. Something to strike off the ‘worth trying once’ list, thanks!
Yeah and I gotta wonder about all these Kingsford “flavored” briquettes I see now. I haven’t looked up any reviews on them but I just don’t see spicing up the briquettes as adding much in the way of flavor. Maybe something like rosemary in quantity I could see, but I dunno. Anyone try these?
Hehehe, sorry to keep returning to mesquite, but I have used the briquettes impregnated with mesquite. They add its flavor to anything you grill them with. I don’t know if the same would hold true for woods with a milder flavor.
Those work fine. I’m talking about these:
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Ewww, weird. I rarely advise burning spices.
Yeah, I did a hard eye-roll when I saw those in the grocery store. I’m imagining a meeting in the ‘new products’ division of Kingsford where an exec said “people, sales are flagging. We need new ideas. Let’s brainstorm here— no idea is too stupid”.
Reminds me of this Onion article (which actually later came true!):
So, I did make the Cook’s Country brisket on the Weber grill yesterday.
Summary - Pretty to very good. I’d give it a solid B+. I followed the CC method exactly, with 2 small variations - I used the John Lewis rub described by Mad Scientist BBQ, and I added 2 cups of water to the pan when I removed the brisket to wrap it. It came out very tender and full of juices, huge improvement over the sous vide method. Everyone loved it. I will definitely be making this again.
Exhaustive recap - I got a choice brisket last week at a restaurant supply store. 11.42 lb, very close to the 12 lb they recommend in the CC episode. I would have gotten the Angus top half choice , which was only about $1 more per pound, but the smallest they had was 14+ lb.
I set up the grill the day before, exactly as instructed - 1 row of 58 briquettes 2 across, then another row of 58 on top. 5 pieces of wood - 1 hickory because I had one left in the bag, then 4 pecan. I had to bend the pan a little to get it to fit, otherwise there was no space to pour in the live coals.
I prepped the brisket with the John Lewis rub - 8 parts black pepper, 3 parts Lawry seasoned salt, 3 parts kosher salt, one part garlic powder. I didn’t do the mustard slather first, because I was prepping it the day before and was worried about the meat sitting in all that vinegar overnight. The brisket had a lot of hard fat around the point, I removed over 3 lb of it. Here’s the seasoned brisket the day before:
Got up early the next morning, started 10 briquettes in the chimney starter, put 6 cups water in the pan, and the brisket on at 6:30 AM:
First note - even with a 11.5 lb brisket, it was tough to fit in the grill. The end of the flat was overhanging some coals, and as a result the last 1 inch or so got overdone & dried out. Next time I’ll move the point as far as possible towards the edge, though that makes temp probe placement difficult.
Covered the grill, and waited. I’m a tinkerer, it was very difficult to just wait and leave it uncovered. I didn’t put a thermometer on the grill, because I’ve found with the snake it’s almost useless - the temp it reads changes dramatically as the hot spot moves around the perimeter. I did keep track of the temp on the dial thermometer on the lid.
Chart of elapsed time, brisket temp, lid temp:
0:00 36 deg 100
1:30 66 310
2:10 88 300
3:15 136 340
4:15 163 350
4:40 170 350
So it took 4:40 to reach the target temp - the CC episode said 4 to 5 hours, so pretty much perfect. I didn’t see a stall as far as I can tell - it seemed to go pretty steadily from 136 to 170.
Removed the brisket, double wrapped it tightly in foil, added charcoal. I also added 2 cups of water to the pan because it seemed to be boiling off quite a bit.
You can see the brisket has shrunk laterally quite a bit compared to the previous pic.
After 90 minutes, the brisket hit 205, and I took it off the grill, wrapped it in a towel, and put it in a pre-heated cooler. That was quite a bit quicker than the 2-3 hours expected in the CC episode. The thermo on the lid read 350 the entire time. I generally don’t trust that a lot, but it was at 300 for the first 2 hours of the cook, so something happened over that time.
By that point it was 12:50, and I had originally planned dinner for 6. I moved it up to 5:30, and took the brisket out at 5:15. It was still quite hot. The first few slices from the flat were dry, which was disappointing, but I believe that’s because they were directly over the burning coals. After that, it was really good. I had fat/juices pouring onto the cutting board just like you see in the videos.
Everybody loved it, including my daughter’s friend who works in a BBQ restaurant. It’s definitely a huge improvement on the disappointing sous vide briskets I’ve made. Good beefy flavor, pull apart tender and moist, the bark came out really good, pleasant and not overpowering smoke flavor as well. The meat was maybe a little overdone, especially at the far end of the flat.
Notes for the future -
If I can find a prime brisket, I’m going to try that. Otherwise I’ll get the Angus choice for next time. But absolutely nothing bigger than 12 lb. 10 would honestly have been a better choice I think, and still had plenty of meat.
I honestly think the grill got hotter than 300 as the cook went on. Next time I’m going to try adjusting the bottom vent to 3/4 open after a few hours.
And my sincere thanks to solost and pulykamell for the help. Any advice on how to store about 4 lb of brisket?
Glad to hear it went as well as it did! Nice job photo referencing the process. I was getting hungry reading through the post, and I had lunch not too long ago. I definitely have to try this again myself soon!
It should freeze well. Put serving size portions in freezer bags, and squeeze out as much air as possible to avoid freezer burn.
Thanks! Luckily I have a vacuum sealer, so I guess the sous vide came in handy after all. How would you reheat it ?
I just gently microwave it- first on the defrost setting, then hit it at full power for just a minute or so. Just enough to warm it up. Then it goes great on a nice Kaiser roll or a wrap with some pickle slices and thin sliced red onion 
Looks fantastic! And that end of the flat is a pain to get right. You can try folding it under a bit if it’s really thin when cooking, but mine usually is noticeably drier there too. For prime, if you have a Costco membership, the prime packer cuts are actually cheaper per pound than the choice flats.