So I had the brisket for dinner tonight, after a 23 hour hold. It came off at 7:15 last night, rested down for two hours to stop the caryover, then got vac sealed and went in to a sous vide bath at 141 at 9:30 PM. I pulled it out at about 6:30PM for dinner.
It came out really good. But of course I'm a perfectionist and I love to nit pick, and on this one my only complaint was that a small part of the bottom of the flat got a little crispy and caused just a small amount of shredding on the board. Could have been worse though, and it wasn't really a big deal.
Over all the doneness was spot on and passed all my tests, including the hang test, the pull test, the bend test etc. I feel like I pulled this one just in time because while it was not over, it walked right up to that line and if it had gone any farther it would have been over done. The flat was nice and juicy as well so I was really happy with it.
I took several pictures but I'm having some technical difficulties and all but one is stuck in my outbox, so I will post them as soon as they hit my inbox. Long story short I usually take pictures on my phone, then email them to myself, open the email on my laptop and save them so I can post, but sometimes it likes to hold them in outbox jail which is annoying.
As far as the first cook in general, I was very happy with how everything turned out, and at the end of the day that is really all that matters. But, that said there are definitely some things I will do differently next time. For starters, I'm going to run a little hotter straight out of the gate. I was tring to keep it at 275, but based on my fireboard my average temp for the whole cook was 250, and often times it was between 230 and 250. My goal next time will be to keep it between 275 and 300. I'm hoping to get better control over the temps by using thinner splits and adding more often.
Second, I feel like I should have boated it sooner, and I think not doing so was the cause of the crispyness on part of the bottom of the flat. Lately I have not been temping briskets, just going by 100% by look and feel. I didn't do that this time, because I knew this pit would run differently than I'm used to so I wanted to temp as a guide. I was waiting for it to hit 180 to boat it, and that just took forever, and my gut kept telling me based on the color and bark formation that it was time to boat it much sooner, but I didn't listen to my gut when I should have.
All in all, for my very first time cooking on this pit I was very happy with the results, and it should only get better from here!
And now for the one pathetic picture I have at this exact moment. The rest will follow when they get out of outbox jail.