Brought home the brisket from the Dashwood abatoir and held it in the fridge until I was ready to deal with it on Saturday evening.  It was decided that I would cook the brisket on the Big Green Egg overnight Saturday and then Big Dog would come and sample it and take some home for the family (and for Dave to try as well) on Sunday morning, at which time he would drop off the hams to be smoked, also on the Egg(s).

The brisket had already been very roughly trimmed out by the meat cutter at the abatoir, so what I saw when I opened the butcher wrap was a boneless brisket weighing about 8.5 lbs.

The first thing I did was remove the thin tail end of the cut as that would surely burn and be shoe leather by the time the bulk of the brisket was finished rendering and cooking.  This tail flap, along with any fat and trimmings, can certainly go into hamburger meat or else be grilled off for fajitas or into chili or any number of other uses.  I need to begin to get the mindset to never throw a single scrap out!  With the sausage making ability now, there is no such thing as 'waste'!  I'm coming from the background of trimming and cooking at competitions where hanging onto the trimmings and fat is just a big hassle when you're living and working out of coolers in the middle of a field for 3 days.  I need to change that 'pitch it' attitude, at least when I am working at home!

With the tail flap removed, I next work on removing the bits of fat and silverskin from the meat side of the brisket.  Most of it is already gone, so it's just a bit of tidying up that needs to be performed.

After this, I cut into the part of the brisket that separates the 'flat' from the 'point' and that is what they refer to as the 'deckle'; it's the big, hard fat wedge that runs between these two cuts.  Some folks leave it in place, or trim it only slightly to allow for the fat to baste the roast as it renders.  For me, cooking on the Egg, which is extremely well insulated and retains moisture just dandy, I tend to cut most of this deckle out as it is just more meat density that cooks without a real purpose or edibility.

On the fat side of the brisket, I just trim down some of the thicker parts of fat laying on top of the roast.  1/4 inch of fat cap is more than plenty.  I cook my briskets fat side down since the heat in an Egg comes from below (I also use a drip tray to act as a heat buffer between fire and meat).  This method allows a buffer of fat between the heat source and the meat and if the temp happens to peak while I (heaven forbid!) grab a nap during the cook, then that layer of fat buys some leeway between the roast burning and being perfectly fine. 

Along the edge of the brisket the meat tapers off to a thin strip, so I angle the knife along this edge and remove about 9 or 10 oz slice of this brisket; more sausage/hamburger meat.  

This brisket is on the small side for me; usually I like to start with about a 10 or 12 lb roast and trim down to 8 or 9.  This one probably started at about 8 and a half, and when I do the unscientific weigh on the family weight scale it looks like I have a 6lb finished brisket to work with.  It''ll do for this experiment.  Dave told me out at the abatoir's that this particular cow was on the smaller side of what he sends out for processing.  Said it was 700lbs hanging weight, while some go upwards of 900.  If all goes well with this cook, I'll be keeping an eye on when he sends in the larger beasts for processing as that is my preference.  However, trimmed up, this brisket looks mighty nice.  One small setback which is quite noticeable is that when the brisket was cut from the primal there were a couple knife slices into the body of the flat portion of the brisket.  Usually this is no big deal, but for competitions, the area where these 'nicks' into the meat were made, is exactly where our turn-in slices will come from.  Something I will and would mention to the meat cutter should we be getting competition briskets from this source.  Generally, when cutting down a whole 700lb carcass into retail cuts, there is not the need for precise attention to detail and so these nicks in the face of the flat portion of the brisket are quite common; I probably see it to some degree in about 60-70% of briskets I purchase.  I'm sure that if I gently point it out, it can be avoided in future purchases for competition.  Believe me, it was a real treat to watch this gentleman work the knife, saw and band saw in breaking this carcass down so quickly and so skillfully!  

Okay; our brisket is trimmed and ready to season.  Before I lay the seasoning on the roast, I make note of the grain in the meat and make a 'notch' in the edge of the brisket to guide me on where, and which direction to make my first cut, in order to ensure I am cutting 'against the grain'.  Cutting with the grain you will get strands of meat and it will be tougher than making a full slice cut against that grain.  It's worth noting that the flat portion and the point portion are in fact two separate muscles, and as such, their graining runs opposite one another!  That is why you need to separate them before cutting and treat as distinct pieces of beef.  Their grain, marbling and fat content (point has more) is unique to each to piece, so we'll need to treat them slightly differently when it comes time to deal with our finished product.

Seasoning is courtesy of Dizzy Pig Cowlick Steak Rub, a nice even coating, and then I place this into an XL Ziploc bag and let it rest for a couple hours while I build the fire in the Egg and get it all temperature stabilized.  I am shooting for a 230-240°F temperature, indirect set up over a drip tray, and am using Smokinlicious! pecan woodscuits for smoke flavour.  I like a mild, but noticeably smoke flavour/application to brisket and that's what we're shooting for.  Let's head off to the smoker!

I had set up the XL Big Green Egg with a drip pan (actually an oversized pizza pan wrapped in foil) below the grid and used pecan and oak for wood smoke on this cook.  I was shooting for a temperature of about 230-240 at the meat level.  The meat went on the cooker about 11:30 pm in hopes of being done by noon the next day when Big Dog and his wife were intending to stop by with the Berkshire hams for their turn in the wood smoke!

After I was confident that the cooker temperature was settled and we were smoking at a nice consistent level, it was time to grab a few winks.  Getting up at 3 and then again at 5, all was coming along nicely.  I decided it was time to switch the temperature probe over from monitoring the pit temperature to gauging where we were at with the internal of the brisket.  Upon first insertion, I got a reading of 170°F.  When I checked again at 7am, it was still reading that 170°F temp.  Definitely into the plateau.  (The plateau is an extended period of time within the cook of large cuts of tough meats where the heat energy from the pit is being focused and concentrated on breaking down the collagens and connective tissues within that cut of meat, be it a brisket, a pork butt or a beef shoulder clod etc.  The internal temperature reading will hold steadily or climb in only very small increments during this time if low, even heat is being applied, as the focus of the heat is on working on breaking the collagen/connective tissues down).

Around 10:30 am, the brisket broke through the plateau stage and began to work towards a finish.  It was fortunate that the Big Dog showed up at the point in the cook where the brisket goes from being still quite tough to rapidly tenderizing (in this case, the stage between 190 and 200).  I had him take a fork and attempt to twist it within the heart of the flat area of the brisket and he was able to experience for himself how the roast dramatically 'loosened up' at every 2 to 3 degree increase in internal temperature at this stage of the cook.  We ended up removing the brisket from the cooker at 200°F internal, which is a little higher than most briskets 'give up' in my experience.  Usually, 194-198°F is where they get pulled from the pit.

After a brief resting period, we separated the flat muscle from the point and made some slices for sampling.  I had made up a garlic-beef broth kind of sauce, which unfortunately wasn't impressive enough to even bother relating the recipe to you here, and we slathered that on the slices and the chunks of point.  The thin flat was on the dry side and certainly not anything I would be proud to submit in a contest.  It was just 'okay' at best.  The point on the other hand, benefited from that extra internal fat and was the saviour of the time and energy put into cooking this piece of beef.  It was Big Dog and Barb's first taste of bbq brisket off the smoker and I'm glad that at least the point caught their attention.  

The bottom line on this brisket roast out of Dave's side of beef is that I think we are going to need to get a brisket from one of the larger cattle that he sends off to slaughter.  A 6lb trimmed point/flat roast is just too small to really hold up to the longer cook times required to get it rendered.  As well, on this cook I did not use the FAB B injection product that I normally would in competition.  That definitely adds moisture and moisture-retention ability to beef, IMO.  On this particular occasion we were trying to get a read on the flavour of the beef alone, so we did not use it.  We do have the brisket from the other side of beef, so we'll use the injection on that one and see if my opinion changes.  Also, with the smaller size roast, I believe I will wrap it at about 160 or 170 internal and see if that helps keep the flat moist.

Overall?  I'd rate the flat portion a 5, the point an 8 and overall a 6.5 for the entire piece; not a failure, just a very modest 'success'.