Put a brisket on at midnight and woke up to a stall 10 degrees higher than usual

Ngl, I thought starting a 14 pound packer at midnight would let me sleep through the first few hours. Woke up at 6am to find the internal temp stuck at 175 instead of my usual 165 stall. Cooker was holding steady at 250 so I figured it was the meat itself, maybe higher collagen content or something. Has anyone else hit a weirdly high stall and just rolled with it or did you bump the heat up early?

2 comments

2 Comments

seth_martinez215d ago

Yeah, gotta gently push back on the collagen idea. Collagen break down happens way earlier, like in the 160-170 range, so at 175 that's mostly done. In my experience, a higher stall usually means the smoker's temp is a little off, or the brisket has a super thick fat cap that's taking longer to render. Yours being at 250 could be a slight difference in how your thermometer reads vs the actual cooking chamber temp. Take this with a grain of salt, but I'd say if it's been stalled for more than an hour or two, bumping it to 275 is totally fine. I've done that plenty of times and never ruined a brisket, just made it finish a bit quicker.

john_murphy5d ago

...and that's why I always check my thermometers with boiling water before a long cook now, because one time I had a probe that was reading 10 degrees low for like six months and I never noticed until I put two probes in the same piece of meat and they were 15 apart. Anyway, about that stall at 175, I had a similar thing happen last summer with a wagyu brisket but I figured the fat was just super thick so I let it ride at 250 for like 4 more hours. It did finally break through around 178 but man it took forever and by the time it hit 203 the bark was like shoe leather. So yeah Seth's got a point about that fat cap being a factor, especially if you trimmed it yourself and left a little more on there.