First Sous vide brisket

[bigssa]

I have been wanting to try this for quite some time and finally took the time to do it. I had a prime brisket from Costco in the freezer that I took out on Monday night and put it in the fridge to defrost. On Wednesday night after work, I trimmed the fat and seasoned it with salt and Meathead's big bad beef rub. And back in the fridge to dry brine for 24 hours. Here is the pic after the seasoning was applied:

Thursday night was time to smoke the brisket on the Weber for 3 hours. I got 3 briquettes started and put them in the corner of the charcoal basket with hickory on top:

This was followed by a full 40 hours of sous vide at 143 degrees:

After impatiently waiting for 40 hours, I took the brisket out and put it back on the Weber for 2 hours at 275 degrees to get a bark going. I have to say that this is my best brisket to date. The flavor was spot on, but more importantly, the texture and moisture was unbelievably awesome. I would highly recommend trying it.

[addicted-to-smoke]

Looks awesome. Now for the details por favor:

After the 3 hours smoking, at what temp did you pull the brisket off?

The 40 hours in the sous vide took it to what temp? My very rudimentary understanding is that the magic of sous vide is that meat can more or less be held "in stasis" once the target temp is reached, so that it's "waiting on you," and not the other way around? In other words, the 40 hrs in your case is just that ... your case, not actually how long it took to reach whatever temp? Hope that makes sense.

Apart from getting the bark set, what was the final pull temp form the Weber?

[bigssa]

For the initial smoking, I did not worry about meat temp, it was all about getting the smoke flavor into it. I kept the kettle at about 250.
Not sure how familiar you are with sous vide, but it is much more than just the temp. The meat will reach the desired temp within a few hours (mostly depends on how big of a piece of meat you are dealing with). But holding the meat at the low temp for a long time will start to break down the tissue and tenderize the meat. You actually have to be careful because the meat can turn to mush after a while and have a fairly disgusting texture. To answer your question, the meat will not go higher than your set temp.
For the final step, the temp reached 155 in the brisket. I chose to do it at 275 because the rub contains sugar, which I did not want to burn. If I would have done a simple salt and pepper rub then I would have put it on a hot fire for a couple of minutes per side to get a nice seat on it and keep the internal temp as low as possible to keep as much moisture as I can.

[Firemunkee]

Wow that is very cool! That brisket looks yummy!

It also looks like we are performer twins, even down to the light colored handle

Sent from my Nexus 5X using Weber Kettle Club mobile app