I bought a whole untrimmed USDA Choice brisket in Cryovac from a local butcher shop (Picture 1). It weighed 11.23 pounds.

The night before I planned to smoke the brisket, I trimmed the fat side to 1/8-1/4" and removed much of the fat around the edges and between the flat and point sections (Picture 2).

Just for fun, I weighed the fat--2 pounds exactly.

Here's the recipe I used for the wet rub on this brisket.

Wearing latex gloves, I massaged the wet rub all over the brisket and placed it in a 2 gallon Ziploc bag for storage in the refrigerator overnight.

At about 9:00am the next day, I started firing up the cooker using the Minion Method (see Firing Up Your Weber Bullet for details). I filled the charcoal chamber to the top with Kingsford charcoal and added 20 lit briquettes on top that were started in a charcoal chimney.

For this cook, I used the Brinkmann water pan featured on the Water Pan Modifications page. Given the 2 gallon capacity of this pan, I would not need to refill it during the cook.

I assembled the cooker, filled the pan with hot water, opened all the bottom vents fully and waited for the temperature to come up to 240-250°F. 

By 10:00am the Weber Bullet reached 248°F and I was ready to cook. In the hopes of getting a larger smoke ring, I did not bring the meat to room temperature before putting it in the cooker. I inserted the Polder probe thermometer into the middle of the brisket's flat section and put it on the top cooking grate with the fat side up. The Polder registered an internal meat temperature of 46°F.

With the meat on, I added 6 cups of small- to medium-sized dry pecan chunks to the charcoal chamber, making sure that some chunks were in contact with burning coals. The deeper Brinkmann water pan made it a bit more difficult to get the chunks into the far side of the chamber, but I got everything situated using a pair of tongs and the brisket was off and running.

For this brisket I used the abbreviated cooking process described on the Brisket - Smoked & Oven Finished page. I smoked the brisket at 245-250°F to an internal temp of 170°F, then removed it from the cooker, wrapped it in foil and baked it in the oven at 300°F to an internal temp of 205°F. This is a great process when you want a tender, moist brisket but can't afford to spend 12+ hours smoking it.

Here's how the temperature and vent settings went for this 8 hour cook:

Note that the vent percentages represent the way I set the vents at the time indicated.

I estimated the brisket would spend 8 hours in the smoker and 90 minutes in the oven. At the 4 hour halfway mark, I put 10 ounces of Martinelli's Premium Apple Juice and 2 ounces of Gentleman Jack whiskey in a spray bottle, basted the meat and turned it over and end-for-end.

At the 6 hour mark I basted the meat again. The brisket reached 170°F two hours earlier than I had planned, so I decided to leave it in the cooker for an additional hour and did not turn it. It rose 2°F during that time and at 5:00pm I removed the brisket from the cooker.

Picture 1 shows how the brisket looked coming out of the cooker. I left the Polder probe in place and wrapped the brisket in a layer of wide heavy-duty aluminum foil. The brisket went into a 300°F oven on a baking sheet to catch any leaks from the foil package.

It only took 75 minutes to bring the internal temp to 205°F. I moved the package from the oven to a towel-lined cooler where I held the meat until I was ready to cut and serve it.

Leaving the Polder in place allows you to monitor the meat temp during this holding time. The cooler keeps the meat well above the 140°F internal temperature required to ensure food safety. Placing towels or crumpled newspaper in the bottom of the cooler will prevent the hot meat from cracking or damaging the cooler lining.

I held the brisket in the cooler for two hours, and in that time the internal temp dropped from 205°F to 173°F. It's amazing how that cooler keeps the meat so hot!

I started by separating the point section from the flat section (Picture 1). In this picture, the flat is on the left and the point on the right.

My favorite part is the flat, so I started with that piece, scraping off most of the excess fat and slicing it across the grain. You can see I got a decent smoke ring, but not a monster one (Picture 2).

Having disposed of the flat, I cut away the excess fat from the point section and shredded it for chopped sandwiches. To shred the point I hold a serrated knife across the grain and push the knife away from me at an angle down through the meat. I'm not trying to cut a clean slice--I want to tear shreds from the soft meat. I also weed out any bits of excess fat and connective tissue that did not break down during cooking.

To the shredded meat I added the leftover cutting board bits from slicing the flat section and some of the burnt ends--the dried-out edges of the brisket flat. I chopped through the meat a few times with a chef's knife and ended up with the pile you see in Picture 3. This picture shows all the chopped meat I got from this brisket. We ate some of the flat before I took the photo, so what you see here is the leftover portion of the flat.

One last thing: the bowl shown in the background of Picture 1 holds the liquid from the bottom of the foil package. Removing the fat renders a tasty juice for drizzling over the sliced brisket flat. There's usually not enough liquid to use a fat separator with success, but you can put the liquid in the freezer to solidify the fat, then skim it off and reheat the au jus in the microwave.

I noted in my smoking log that the exterior appearance of the brisket was good and the smoke ring was 1/8". The flat was moist and very tender and had to be cut into thick slices to keep the meat together.

The flavor was quite good, but not noticeably different from a dry rub, in my opinion. The outside meat had a nice spicy flavor, and the burnt ends had a bit of heat to them from the concentrated flavor of the wet rub. I know some people don't like burnt ends, but I think they're one of the best parts of a brisket!

I portioned and vacuum packed the leftovers using my Foodsaver and froze them for later enjoyment (Picture 1). I've also included a picture showing the leftover fuel in the cooker. You can see that I could have gone on smoking for several hours with the remaining charcoal--thanks to the Minion Method!