Arvin R
Sponsor
8lbs is a pretty small brisket and with a pit temp of 275 you probably won't get a stall most of the time as 275 is enough heat energy to quickly turn whatever moisture is sweating out of the meat to steam off where as a pit temp of 200-225 it would match the rate for evaporative cooling which causes the stall. I believe saturation pressure for water is about 212deg F (at atmospheric pressure) so at that pit temp(212deg F) the water vapor(steam) and condensed water(from the meat sweating) is at a thermodynamic equilibrium. The higher you turn your pit temp up past 212 the easier the moisture will turn into steam and dry the surface of the meat which lessens/eliminates the stall.I'm very interested in this! I fully plan on expanding my setup when we have a place with a little more room for sure.
I had an odd experience with this brisket where I don't believe there was a stall. I know that's something that can happen, and I've experienced it with a bunch of other briskets I've cooked (and I've split them roughly evenly between foil-wrapping and non), but this one was 10 lbs before trimming, roughly 8 lbs after trimming, and had an internal temp of 202 after 8.5 hours of cooking.
Even accounting for the higher heat of 270, that's a blazingly fast brisket, but it turned out phenomenally. Looking forward to getting to dial this in and try some ribs next. I'm gonna take a stab in the dark given your citing the 203 finish point that you either follow the pros or also enjoyed Meathead's book?
There are a bunch of other factors that can affect the stall such as current humidity for that day, if you use a water pan in your cook chamber, if you spritz or mop, density of the charcoal, and airflow and the surface area of the piece of meat you're smoking.
The Texas crutch is a great way to get past the stall as even though the meat is still sweating, the heat is retained due to wrapping it as no evaporative cooling can happen.
