Beef on my Vision Kamado -- I Need Help!

[RJ_Make]

A few other thoughts:

Don't let the brisket sit out and come up to room temp. Take it out of the fridge, apply the rub, and then go straight into the cooker. If it's cold moisture will condense on it, which attracts more smoke.

After the first few hours, once you start getting a good bark on it, it's really not taking on any more smoke, so don't worry too much about it.

I've only cooked two briskets, one 13lbs full packer on my BGE, one teeny-tiny 1.1lbs piece of flat on a WSM. Both of mine were good as far as flavor, had a nice smoke ring (which I know has nothing to do with flavor, but it is pretty!), but both I underestimated how long they would take to cook, and I should have let them cook longer. They were both a little dry. I'm still figuring out brisket myself.

The packer ::

Do you attribute the dryness to under cooking?

 

[RJ_Make]

You guys are GREAT!

Ok, so I took all the advice and decided on a what I wasn't going to change (water pan and late night rub application) and applied every other suggestion/change to my latest cook.

I smoked a beef shoulder and blade roast and WOW what a HUGE difference your suggestions made. I pulled one and sliced the other.

Both roasts were not only flavorful and tender but JUICY :clap2::clap2::clap2::clap2::clap2:!

I still didn't get as much smoke on the meat as I would have liked, so I still need to work that out, but let me tell you.. Night/Day difference.

I have yet to investigate the burn pattern so I'll post pictures of that to get some more guidance on getting more smoke on the meat.

Thanks to those who took the time to help, it's much appreciated not only by me but also my family. :clap::clap::clap::clap::clap:

 

[Rockinar]

Smoke Not Lasting Very Long
The second is I can't seem to keep the wood smoking for very long, maybe a couple of hours at most. When I inspect the coals after a cook, I notice that much of the wood is still present and only half burnt (the section closest to the hot coals)

Since adding wood, or even resetting the un-burnt pieces is such a pain on the Kamado style grill, I really need some advice on how to get the smoke to last longer.

You seem to have the wrong expectations and understanding of what "smoking" meat is.

The term is an oxymoron because the goal is to get the charcoal to NOT smoke.

Your goal is to get you fire to burn as clean and as smokeless as possible. You don't want smoke chugging out the whole time. Lump charcoal alone will do a good job of that. You dont need to add chunks (if you dont want) and certainly don't need to re-arrange the wood chunks during a cook of any length. Lump charcoal IS wood and should do a good job alone.

Food cooked with clean burning and almost smokeless lump charcoal will taste way better than food that been subjected to smoldering wood chunks the entire time. The food subjected to the smoldering wood chunks will taste smokey and bitter. You are trying to make the meat taste like great meat, not like smoke.

 

[m-fine]

RJ_Make - that you state that you find your cooks dry is something I've not run into in good kamado management of cooks. Let's take a look at your post and see if we can figure this out.

First, are you slicing the brisket and eating immediately or waiting. Brisket dries out quite quickly once sliced.

Second, are you trimming fat from the brisket flat before you cook it? If so, I suggest that you leave much more fat on your brisket flat before you put it on the grate. When you purchase a brisket, try and see how aggressively it was trimmed prior to being cryovaced for sale.

Third, I tend to cook my briskets fat cap up over a drip pan that rests on a heat deflector. I always use drip pans and heat deflectors when doing a low-n-slow cooks. I don't ever use a water pan when cooking in any of my kamados.

Fourth, to get a good deal of smoke on a cook, I put the cook in the freezer for an our before the cook goes on the cooking grate. Smoke condensation decreases as the surface tep of the cook increases during the cooking process.

Fifth, to get good smoke all during a cook, strategic placement of wood chunks is paramount. Now I heat soak my kamados for an hour or so at the cooking temp so that once a assemble everything for the cook, everything gets back to temp ASAP. I always do low-n-slows with a heat deflector, a drip pan, the cooking grate, and then the cook. Prior to heat soaking, I just pile all this stuff on the main grate. Then when I'm ready to cook, I'll assemble per the above. This is when I put on the smoke wood. I place the smoke wood in concentric circles around the fire. A priori, you really don't know how the fire will spread. So I put a fair amount in very close concentric circles. I nestle the smoke wood down in the lup level with the top of the lump. Work quickly as your heat deflector and cooking grate is cooling while you put smoke wood in your cooker.

Sixth, and this sounds counter intuitive, but I've never wrapped a single low-n-slow cook in over 20 years of kamado cooking until I pull the cook and then I wrap it for storage in my cooler. I've never had a dry cook. I also Generally don't pull a cook until it probes very tender at between 200-205° or so. If you like to wrap, might I suggest that you add some apple juice during the wrapping process? This might help with the dryness.

Seventh, I notice that you've used a digital temp controller. I don't, but that's a personal preference. What percentage of the time was the fan blowing? If it was blowing a big percentage of the time, this might be causing some of our dryness. What's happening is you're blowing moisture that would orally be staying inside the kamado out the top vent. Check your cook details for your blower. Just a thought.

Lastly, I know a good many folks who have great results with their Vision Kamados. So will you. We'll get this figured out for you. No big deal.

+1 to pretty much all of this.

No need to wrap, no need for water in the drip pan. The controller is not an issue as it will not add more air than is necessary to hold the set temp. What may happen though is is you have a target temp above 211 and a large mass of water, a lot of BTU's will go into the water and into making steam and that means more fan time.

My setup is a ceramic heat deflector, a few spacers, maybe a 1/8-1/4" worth or rolled or wadded foil scraps, drip pan on top. The small air gap keeps the drippings from burning/smoking if there is a hot spot on the deflector. Beef then goes on an elevated grate 3 or more inches over the deflector. Temps are monitored at the cooking grate, all other temperatures, including internal temp are irrelevant information.

The final piece of the puzzle is what comes first. The hunk of meat you buy is important. Cooking a small piece of flat of mid to low level quality is starting with a bunch of disadvantages that you don't need while learning a new cooker. Look for a Certified Angus Beef full packer of at least 12 pounds preferably in the 14-15.5 range. A quality CAB brisket will had a decent amount of fat and a good flavor profile and is usually reasonably priced. This is far from perfect but it puts the odds very much in your favor vs a box store cut that may be dairy cow or who knows what from where.

 

[m-fine]

You seem to have the wrong expectations and understanding of what "smoking" meat is.

The term is an oxymoron because the goal is to get the charcoal to NOT smoke.

Your goal is to get you fire to burn as clean and as smokeless as possible. You don't want smoke chugging out the whole time. Lump charcoal alone will do a good job of that. You dont need to add chunks (if you dont want) and certainly don't need to re-arrange the wood chunks during a cook of any length. Lump charcoal IS wood and should do a good job alone.

Food cooked with clean burning and almost smokeless lump charcoal will taste way better than food that been subjected to smoldering wood chunks the entire time. The food subjected to the smoldering wood chunks will taste smokey and bitter. You are trying to make the meat taste like great meat, not like smoke.

I can't agree with much of this. There is flavor in wood smoke that you won't get from charcoal. You don't want too much bitter smoldering smoke flavor, so balance is needed, but you can (and should?) add wood flavor to a kamado cook and get a better more complex flavor profile than charcoal alone.

 

[RJ_Make]

+1 to pretty much all of this.

No need to wrap, no need for water in the drip pan. The controller is not an issue as it will not add more air than is necessary to hold the set temp. What may happen though is is you have a target temp above 211 and a large mass of water, a lot of BTU's will go into the water and into making steam and that means more fan time.

My setup is a ceramic heat deflector, a few spacers, maybe a 1/8-1/4" worth or rolled or wadded foil scraps, drip pan on top. The small air gap keeps the drippings from burning/smoking if there is a hot spot on the deflector. Beef then goes on an elevated grate 3 or more inches over the deflector. Temps are monitored at the cooking grate, all other temperatures, including internal temp are irrelevant information.

The final piece of the puzzle is what comes first. The hunk of meat you buy is important. Cooking a small piece of flat of mid to low level quality is starting with a bunch of disadvantages that you don't need while learning a new cooker. Look for a Certified Angus Beef full packer of at least 12 pounds preferably in the 14-15.5 range. A quality CAB brisket will had a decent amount of fat and a good flavor profile and is usually reasonably priced. This is far from perfect but it puts the odds very much in your favor vs a box store cut that may be dairy cow or who knows what from where.

I don't know what it is about wrapping and water pan usage that I can't seem to give up, but maybe one day.:razz: I guess I've done it for so long with my electric that well it's become a 'crutch'.

My next brisket will definitely be a full packer.

 

[RJ_Make]

You seem to have the wrong expectations and understanding of what "smoking" meat is.

The term is an oxymoron because the goal is to get the charcoal to NOT smoke.

Your goal is to get you fire to burn as clean and as smokeless as possible. You don't want smoke chugging out the whole time. Lump charcoal alone will do a good job of that. You dont need to add chunks (if you dont want) and certainly don't need to re-arrange the wood chunks during a cook of any length. Lump charcoal IS wood and should do a good job alone.

Food cooked with clean burning and almost smokeless lump charcoal will taste way better than food that been subjected to smoldering wood chunks the entire time. The food subjected to the smoldering wood chunks will taste smokey and bitter. You are trying to make the meat taste like great meat, not like smoke.

Perhaps I don't understand.... but I can taste differences with not only the type of wood used but also in how much is transferred to the meat. So I would like to improve on that with the ceramic, at least to the same level as my electric.

 

[GLOCKer]

Are you using a diffuser stone or are you smoking with direct heat????

 

[RJ_Make]

Are you using a diffuser stone or are you smoking with direct heat????

I'm using the Vision ceramic diffuser.